TITLE: 10/17 Eve Shift: 2330-0500 UTC (1630-2200 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Commissioning
INCOMING OPERATOR: None
SHIFT SUMMARY:
Tried to lock the IFO a few times And couldn't get all the way up to Prep_ASC_For_Full_IFO.
I started to do an initial alignment and 15 minutes into an initial alignment the ISI BS stage2 Watchdog got tripped by a small localish earth quake. Initial Alignment got stuck and I restarted it after resolve the BS ISI issues. Since then Initial Alignment has not been abel to complete. I did restore the sliders back to their positions 3 hours ago, that did not resolve the issue.  I probably have to push something in a direction.  I'm putting the IFO in down and the IMC in offline. for the weekend.

I'm also trying to reimage the NUC 30 display before I leave and found that NUC30 came up as NUC26 (I guess it's the old NUC26?) which is still running and have to re-image it again and still have to get Puppet installed on it.

TLDR: I broke everything.... and I'm sorry, I'm trying to fix at least one of those things before I leave tonight. 
Update I put the old harddrive back into NUC30 as the Bookworm installed was hanging everytime I tried to re-image.... so Everything is still broken and I'm going home for the weekend.


 

TITLE: 10/16 Eve Shift: 2330-0500 UTC (1630-2200 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Commissioning
OUTGOING OPERATOR: Ryan C
CURRENT ENVIRONMENT:
    SEI_ENV state: CALM
    Wind: 6mph Gusts, 3mph 3min avg
    Primary useism: 0.02 μm/s
    Secondary useism: 0.30 μm/s 
QUICK SUMMARY:

H1 was held in down while Sheila worked on IMC which was held offline.
When we were ready we started locking.

Held lock in Acquire DRMI while touching up SRM. 
Went up to CARM_TO_TR, before a lockloss.

I took NUC30 down to re-image it.
 

TITLE: 10/16 Day Shift: 1430-2330 UTC (0730-1630 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Commissioning
INCOMING OPERATOR: Tony
SHIFT SUMMARY: We held in DOWN, and with the IMC offline for a bit to investigate the NPRO, Sheila and Daniel increased the IMC diode power x2 and reduced gains, then we resumed locking. The microseism has turned around.
LOG:

• 14:45 IA
• 20:06 UTC EQ mode, likely from a 2.6 in Alaska.
• VAC HAM1 Ion Pump Controller (cdsws12 display 5) is down on the control room screenshots.
• After Sheila and Daniel increased the IMC diode power and lowered gains (alog92332) I went back to locking, ending up doing another IA as things seem to have drifted.
• The buildups still didn't look great, so I adjusted SRM and PRM till 90 and 18 respectively were more stable, I had to move PRM a few dozen microradians in P.
• During one acquisition the IMC was stuck in ACQUIRE, with the length drives oscillating until Sheila closed the REFL shutter which GRD reopened and it then it locked.

Sheila Daniel

The IMC REFL power (IMC_REFL_DC) was 20.2mW when unlocked. We adjusted it to 40.8mW, a good factor of 2 higher.

In detail:

Jan10, 2025: With 60.5W input we had 16.6mW (locked)
Oct 15, 2026: With 10W input we had 0.31mW (locked); scaling this to 60W input and adding 10% for the losses in the JAC, we get ~2.1mW. 

In principle we would be able to run with 8x more power on the PD, since the higher order modes in reflection of the IMC have been reduced significantly by adding JAC. However this would result in a unacceptable high power when unlocked even at 2W input. So we decided to increase the power by a factor of 2 only.

Camilla, Sheila, Ryan Crouch

Attached are three screenshots of fast locklosses from last night and this morning (here, here, here) and one more normal lockloss for comparison.  These seem a lot like the locklosses that plauged us in October and Nov of 2024, because AS power drops down before it goes up, and the IMC looses lock at exactly the same time as the light disappears at the AS port. 

Here are some useful alogs to reference the previous problems: 81371 (Vicky also has a comment to this with a useful summary of investigations done)

Ryan Crouch had the IFO in down, with the IMC locked, for an hour (16:53 -17:53 UTC). Screenshot of the hour trends and zoomed in on the biggest glitch seen here. He also had the IMC offline for 1 hour, from 17:55 UTC to 18:55 UTC, trends here.  These can be compared to similar trends from last Nov, for example 81356.  The size of the glitches in the PMC PZT is similar to then, but other signals like PMC mixer mon and FSS fast mon are not glitching now. 

(Will add more info later, posting now so Camilla can add her plots in comments).

We've been having trouble staying locked recently with lots of fast lock losses so we are looking into the PSL laser.

16:53 UTC after a lockloss at CARM_TO_TR I requested us to stay in DOWN, so we could have just the IMC locked.

17:53 UTC I will bring the IMC to offline after an hour of holding in DOWN.

TITLE: 10/16 Day Shift: 1430-2330 UTC (0730-1630 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Commissioning
OUTGOING OPERATOR: None
CURRENT ENVIRONMENT:
    SEI_ENV state: CALM
    Wind: 9mph Gusts, 7mph 3min avg
    Primary useism: 0.02 μm/s
    Secondary useism: 0.36 μm/s 
QUICK SUMMARY:

• MIcroseism is starting to hit the 90th percentile, wind is low
• CDS, dust, and temperatures look good
• IFO beens in GREEN_ARMS_MANUAL with XARM struggling to lock overnight

TITLE: 10/16 Eve Shift: 2330-0300 UTC (1630-2000 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Commissioning
INCOMING OPERATOR: None
SHIFT SUMMARY: I've been picking up where commissioners left off this afternoon trying to engage more full IFO ASC loops.

When we reached PREP_ASC for the first time on my shift, I updated the green alignment references (SDF screenshots attached). My intention tonight was to get the references updated again once more ASC was on, but this proved slow-going as there have been many locklosses in PREP_ASC between 2 and 30 minutes spent in the state. By hand, I was enabling CHARD, INP1, and PRC2 (all P&Y) without any adjustment needed, then I moved PRM in pitch to bring the ADS PIT3 error signal to zero and close it as well. At 01:55 UTC (GPS 1476150918) is when I had all of these loops closed and close to converged. My plan after that was to start moving PRM in yaw to close YAW3, but we lost lock and haven't spent enough time in PREP_ASC on subsequent relocks since then for me to finish that process.

Relocking up to PREP_ASC continues to be smooth, and Sheila is taking over commissioning for the evening.

Sheila, Louis, Elenna

We have been repeatedly locking fairly well to prep_asc_for_full_ifo. We have set some green references to a decent alignment. However, we have not been able to set the green references to the alignment that we think is best, which we got to after we walked dofs and closed some loops. However, the attached green references get us close enough.

We have successfully closed CHARD, INP1 and PRC2 P and Y. We tried closing MICH P without problems, but closing MICH Y seems to cause problems either by itself or with MICH P. We also starting walking the PRM to bring ADS3 to zero, but only got about a third of the way before a lockloss.

When we did successfully close MICH P, we did so with half gain, this gives about a 0.5 Hz UGF, based on this somewhat sketchy OLG. The design is for 2 Hz, but we think this is ok for now.

I disengaged PRC1 loop in DRMI ASC for now until we know what PRM alignment we will be happy with in full lock. The PRC1 error signal is set by arbitrary offsets on POP A, and we may prefer a different PRM alignment in full lock.

Sheila, Oli, and I took a look at some of our locklosses. We continue to lose lock while sitting in prep_asc, some we can attribute to alignment engagement going haywire, and others we have no reason for. The lockloss tool seems to be tagging many of these locklosses as "IMC" meaning that the IMC is dropping out within 50 ms of the power drop on AS_C. However, Oli notes that the L2 signals of all four test masses seem to be diverging even before the IMC drops out, so maybe this tag is misleading. The behavior of the coil drives suggests that maybe something is going wrong in DHARD P.

Sheila and I found that there are two DARM boosts we could be engaging, that are usually engaged around DARM offset or PREP DC readout. This might help suppress some low frequency DARM motion that DHARD could also be seeing. I moved both of these boosts to DRMI_TO_POP.

As a side note, we successfully used Stefan's "wfsreliefpast.py" script to revert to some good alignment we had when walking full IFO alignment!

TITLE: 10/15 Day Shift: 1430-2330 UTC (0730-1630 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Commissioning
INCOMING OPERATOR: Ryan S
SHIFT SUMMARY: Commissioners worked on ASC loops and CARM, the IFO can relock up to DRMI pretty quickly with its current alignment.
LOG:

• We had some trouble in the morning, after the first lockloss DRMI and PRMI both had trouble relocking. Initial Alignment gave us trouble as the IMC couldn't/wouldn't stay locked for INPUT_ALIGN, the FSS kept unlocking. The FSS ended up getting stuck in a loop of 4-3 and then state 2-3, Sheila reverted the alignment to an earlier one with better IR flashes and we skipped input align. PRC went well, MICH_DARK I did by hand, then SR2 was fine but we struggled to lock SRY, adjusting SRM in P helped. Once we got to PRMI the alignment still didn't look great, Elenna adjusted IM4, PR2, BS, and PRM to improve it and then SRM in DRMI as usual.
• All of the CARM_TO_TR locklosses we've had in the past two days (4) appear to be IMC locklosses.
• More ASC loop and CARM measurements at PREP_ASC_FOR_FULL_IFO
  • 22:21 UTC An IMC lockloss took us down while commissioners were walking alignments
• Most of locklosses seem to be IMC locklosses this afternoon, from PREP_ASC, and START_TR_CARM

TITLE: 10/15 Eve Shift: 2330-0500 UTC (1630-2200 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Commissioning
OUTGOING OPERATOR: Ryan C
CURRENT ENVIRONMENT:
    SEI_ENV state: CALM
    Wind: 18mph Gusts, 11mph 3min avg
    Primary useism: 0.04 μm/s
    Secondary useism: 0.25 μm/s 
QUICK SUMMARY: Commissioning continuing, currently in PREP_ASC and setting green alignment references.

Closes FAMIS85193, last checked in alog92229

For the OUT building fans, EX_FAN2_570_2 (yellow) looks a bit noisier, on MY_FAN2_270_1 (pink), the noise seems more periodic than previously. They're all under 0.7.

For the CS building fans, everything looks fine.

Closes FAMIS85193, last checked in alog92117
Laser Status:
    NPRO output power is 1.842W
    AMP1 output power is 70.67W
    AMP2 output power is 139.8W
    NPRO watchdog is GREEN
    AMP1 watchdog is GREEN
    AMP2 watchdog is GREEN
    PDWD watchdog is GREEN

PMC:
    It has been locked 23 days, 5 hr 24 minutes
    Reflected power = 29.77W
    Transmitted power = 104.9W
    PowerSum = 134.7W

FSS:
    It has been locked for 0 days 0 hr and 8 min
    TPD[V] = 0.5066V

ISS:
    The diffracted power is around 2.8%
    Last saturation event was 0 days 0 hours and 9 minutes ago

Possible Issues:
    PMC reflected power is high

Camilla, Miriam, Travis, Sophie

First attempt measuring the beam after a long propagation distance using the FLIR camera. Here are the measurement distances, laser power settings and corresponding images. Using the Fintrace model the beamsize at each point was modelled. 

note: Nominal distane to ITM is 36.735m but will be subject to exact table placement

Here is a drive with the pictures: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/153uQSwYIMZdKYFz6KgaSdyBdOywcY-T0?usp=drive_link

A comment will be added with the procedure :)

Caroline C and I went down to EX... again.... (Sorry EY, I know it was your turn, but next time I promise I'll measure you... )
We took the PS4 Working Standard (WS) integrating sphere down to EX.
We found EX's PCAL system is covered in caution tape, like it was in the center of a foreboding crime scene!  

Unfortunately the red Current Limit LED was Lit again, and I trended the channel H1:CAL-PCALX_LASERDIODECURRENT back to find it has been lit up since last Tuesday. Supisiously close to the beckhoff restart time. I'm not sure which channel is best to check for beckhoff restarts yet.  I was able to just move the voltage down a little and back up to rectify this issue before starting the measurement.

We took some pictures of the beam spots before we started to prove our innocence.
Followed instructions on T1500062 and followed it without any deviations from our part. The SEI system was put in ISI Damped HEPI offline for this measurement for other work though. 
Everything went as smooth as it can while dodging lifts, scaffolding, and caution tape.
Took some After measurement beam spot pics to prove our innocence again. 

Overall I don't think the GV20 work had any real impact on PCAL pointing or performance. Shoutout to the GV20 team for doing such a great job! 


Wanna see the Absolute Calibration details of this specific measurement and the commands input and output? :

@cdsws25: python3 generate_measurement_data.py --WS PS4 --date 2026-10-13
Reading in config file from python file in scripts
../../../Common/O4PSparams.yaml
PS4 rho, kappa, u_rel on 2026-10-13 corrected to ES temperature 299.8 K :
-4.700380443762894 -0.0002694340454223 0.0007505543347185126
Copying the scripts into tD directory...
Connected to h1daqnds1
martel run
reading data at start_time:  1475945650
reading data at start_time:  1475946100
reading data at start_time:  1475946460
reading data at start_time:  1475947100
reading data at start_time:  1475947444
reading data at start_time:  1475947820
reading data at start_time:  1475947998
reading data at start_time:  1475948640
reading data at start_time:  1475949030
Ratios: -0.45984106211593845 -0.46714267909102675
writing nds2 data to files
finishing writing
Background Values:
bg1 =        9.805339; Background of TX when WS is at TX
bg2 =        5.167711; Background of WS when WS is at TX
bg3 =        9.886270; Background of TX when WS is at RX
bg4 =        5.195956; Background of WS when WS is at RX
bg5 =        9.755134; Background of TX
bg6 =        0.367068; Background of RX

The uncertainty reported below are Relative Standard Deviation in percent 

Intermediate Ratios
RatioWS_TX_it      = -0.459841;
RatioWS_TX_ot      = -0.467143;
RatioWS_TX_ir      = -0.454541;
RatioWS_TX_or      = -0.462195;
RatioWS_TX_it_unc  = 0.068338;
RatioWS_TX_ot_unc  = 0.070460;
RatioWS_TX_ir_unc  = 0.074890;
RatioWS_TX_or_unc  = 0.065120;
Optical Efficiency
OE_Inner_beam                      = 0.988231;
OE_Outer_beam                      = 0.989349;
Weighted_Optical_Efficiency        = 0.988790;

OE_Inner_beam_unc                  = 0.046695;
OE_Outer_beam_unc                  = 0.045578;
Weighted_Optical_Efficiency_unc    = 0.065252;

Martel Voltage fit:
Gradient      = 1636.946737;
Intercept     = 0.081815;

 Power Imbalance = 0.984370;

Endstation Power sensors to WS ratios::
Ratio_WS_TX                        = -1.078768;
Ratio_WS_RX                        = -1.391922;

Ratio_WS_TX_unc                    = 0.042184;
Ratio_WS_RX_unc                    = 0.040097;

=============================================================
============= Values for Force Coefficients =================
=============================================================

Key Pcal Values :
GS           =      -5.135100; Gold Standard Value in (V/W)             
WS           =      -4.700380; Working Standard Value             

costheta     =      0.988362; Angle of incidence
c            =      299792458.000000; Speed of Light
             
End Station Values : 
TXWS         =        -1.078768; Tx to WS Rel responsivity (V/V)
sigma_TXWS   =        0.000455; Uncertainity of Tx to WS Rel responsivity (V/V)
RXWS         =        -1.391922; Rx to WS Rel responsivity (V/V)
sigma_RXWS   =        0.000558; Uncertainity of Rx to WS Rel responsivity (V/V)

e            =        0.988790; Optical Efficiency
sigma_e      =        0.000645; Uncertainity in Optical Efficiency

Martel Voltage fit : 
Martel_gradient         =        1636.946737; Martel to output channel (C/V)
Martel_intercept   =        0.081815; Intercept of fit of     Martel to output (C/V)

Power Loss Apportion : 
beta          =        0.998895; Ratio between input and output (Beta)  
E_T          =        0.993829; TX Optical efficiency 
sigma_E_T          =        0.000324; Uncertainity in TX Optical efficiency 
E_R          =        0.994929; RX Optical Efficiency 
sigma_E_R          =        0.000325; Uncertainity in RX Optical efficiency 

Force Coefficients : 
FC_TxPD          =        7.894807e-13; TxPD Force Coefficient 
FC_RxPD          =        6.188002e-13; RxPD Force Coefficient 
sigma_FC_TxPD          =        3.610367e-24; TxPD Force Coefficient 
sigma_FC_RxPD          =        2.777621e-24; RxPD Force Coefficient 

data written to CDS: /ligo/gitcommon/Calibration/pcal/O4/ES/measurements/LHO_EndX/tD20261013

That's cool and all but perhaps you wanna see that data with relation to the End X's history, I gotchu: 
You can see the trends here or go to the git page for this measurement.