Attached are monthly TCS trends for HWS & CO2 lasers. (FAMIS link)
TITLE: 04/01 Day Shift: 1430-2330 UTC (0730-1630 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Planned Engineering
OUTGOING OPERATOR: None
CURRENT ENVIRONMENT:
SEI_ENV state: MAINTENANCE
Wind: 5mph Gusts, 2mph 3min avg
Primary useism: 0.02 μm/s
Secondary useism: 0.19 μm/s
QUICK SUMMARY:
HAM1 JAC alignment work continues (I pressume similar for SQZ alignment.) There is a plan to swap out a ceiling HEPA Fan for the anteroom of the H1 PSL enclosure this morning. Also prep for HAM3 venting is on the docket when HAM1 work completes (i.e. lock HEPI, chamber cleaning, etc.)....and also venting the corner as well.
LVEA is still Operations laser SAFE (or bifurcated for HAM1 + SQZ work and laser goggles required at height). Warmer this morning April Fool's Day and rainy.
Jennie W, Keita K, Jason O, Jenne D,
Once we got the locking of JAC and IMC working at 20W this morning, Keita went into the chamber while we had PRMI aligned to check the POP beam alignment in HAM1.
We had trouble keeping the IMC locked when Keita was moving next to the chamber, JAC occasionally unlocks but is staying locked for long periods. I hypothesise that JM3 moving around is more of a problem than JM1 because of this. Eventually we managed to stay locked with 4W while Keita was in chamber. Over this period Keita realised the beam was mis-aligned coming out of the POP periscope and so we used PR2 and PR3 yaw to walk the beam back till it was well centred on AS AIR camera and we still saw flashes. Eventually we mis-aligned ITMY and just used PRX flashes. We had to move 10 microradians on PR2 and then correct with 1 microradian on PR3 to maintain the alignment.
I put the power up to 10W from 4 W and we saw a power change on ASC-POP_X.
To see if we could recover alignment onto POP-X with PM1 we put the PM1 yaw up to a high value so it was railing and we did see some counts on ASC-POP_X QPD SUM but we cannot point the beam onto the diode before PM1 rails so we undid this.
The day ended with a total move of -120 on PR2 yaw, -12 on PR3 yaw, -8.1 mircoradians on PR3 pitch, and +81 microradians on PR2 pitch. Keita can now see the beam on the side of the ASC POP X QPD.
The pitch changes we did at the end of the day were to try and improve the steering to ASC POP X but we didn't get time to optimise this so we can undo them tomorrow if necessary.
Summary: Checking POP is hard as the IMC will unlock very easily if someone is in HAM1, probably due to shaking of JM3. We need to work out if we trust the PRC alignment axis or if we want to cross-check it with something else (like the ALS beam from the X-arm) before we continue debugging.
(Jordan V., Travis S., Gerardo M.)
We removed and replaced the broken pressure regulator for GV7, we haven't tested the new regulator yet (open or try to hard close GV7), but hope to do so soon. During the regulator replacement we installed an isolation valve on the line that feeds GV7, this for upcoming work on this system.
While doing the replacement of the regulator for GV7, we discovered that the pressure regulator for GV8 pneumatic system is broken too, currently it is reporting a max pressure of 100 psi and a low pressure of 80 psi, it rides the instrument air compressor behavior (high and lows). We tried to lower the pressure but the regulator is non-responsive. We'll replace the pressure regulator at the next opportunity. Also, it turns out that the pressure regulators attached to the different pneumatic gate valves are not the same model.
(Travis, Jordan, Dave, Gerardo)
We finally got a chance to actuate GV7, but to the open position, and it took about 40 psi to start moving, it opened without any issues, current pressure to keep it open is 55 psi. Opening the gate valve generated a few alarms, nothing out of what we expected, Dave took care of them.
GV7 will remain open until work at HAM1 is done, then we can attempt to hard close this gate valve, then after a start a vent of the corner.
A very smooth working pressure regulator, it did its job with ease.
Following the B13, B2H34 and H12 upgrades in Dec 2025 and Jan 2026 today I did a second round of verification that the IOP models were reading the correct ADC channels and that the MEDMs were correct. The IOP models are correct and no changes were needed.
Some MEDMs had white-boxes for the raw ADC counts, which was addressed. The SWWD MEDMs use macro file substitution for the detailed screens, and the differences that now exist between the sites means it is no longer feasible to maintain these files in the cds/common/medm/ area. Today I moved them to cds/h1/medm before making the final updates.
At this time all the MEDMs are correct with the exception of the BS IPC channel for SUS-BS to SEI-BSC2. h1iopsusb2h34 has a simulink copy-paste error, the channel which should be BS_WD_SND but is actually BS_WD_SND1, hence the white-box.
I'm also reminded that during these upgrades we decided to not change the IPC channel names in order to minimize the scope of work, so IPC names containing B123, H2A, H34 still exist. During the next RCG upgrade we will correct the names.
An overview of the SWWDs at both sites can be found in the DCC T2600106
TITLE: 03/31 Day Shift: 1430-2330 UTC (0730-1630 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Planned Engineering
INCOMING OPERATOR: None
SHIFT SUMMARY:
Lots of subsystem work going on today. The JAC team continued their alignment work at HAM1. SQZ team continued alignment work at SQZT7 and then in the Control Room. SPI team was in the Optics Lab most of the day.
Tomorrow morning a new HEPA fan will be installed for the h1psl room's anteroom....so it shouldn't affect HAM1 work.
LOG:
Addressed TCS Chillers (Wed [Mar4] 1242-0105pm local time) & CLOSED FAMIS #28559. (Last checked 28558).
For measurements below, measuring from "top" of the red floaty ball.
Due to a mistake in past CHETA models there is more astigmatism then expected on the tables and a change in beam size at the ITM. The astigmatism can be fixed by rotating L1 around the vertical axis and the beam size can be changed by movind L2 using the translation stage in each setup. Using a modified Fintrace model the required rotation angle and translation for each table as they are currently populated at LHO (0922, 0918) and LLO (0919, 0851) have been calculated and are shown below.
The tables below give the current astigmatism and then the angles and translations such that the x and y beamsize on the ITM is 52.7mm with no astigmatism.
This code is avaliable in the CHETA modelling repository.
| Unit | Current astig [mm] | Rotation angle of L1 [deg] | Translation [mm] | ITM wx [mm] | ITM wy [mm] |
| 0922 | -7.69 | 10.17 | -0.12 | 52.7 | 52.7 |
| 0918 | -4.02 | 11.84 | -12.89 | 52.7 | 52.7 |
| 0919 | -7.55 | 12.17 | 3.81 | 52.7 | 52.7 |
| 0851 | -5.76 | 11.13 | 3.73 | 52.7 | 52.7 |
Without translating of L2 astigmatism can be removed but the beam size is still unoptimised.
| Unit | Current atig [mm] | Angle [deg] | ITM wx [mm] | ITM wy [mm] |
| 0922 | -7.69 | 10.17 | 52.75 | 52.75 |
| 0918 | -4.02 | 11.18 | 55.39 | 55.39 |
| 0919 | -7.55 | 12.03 | 50.95 | 50.95 |
| 0851 | -5.76 | 11.24 | 51.80 | 51.80 |
Sheila, Keita, Jennie W, Jenne D, Georgia B.
We want to be able to power up to 20W in JAC to check the POP beam.
We were loosing lock with about 8W into JAC because the REFL shutter was closing. Jennie Wright measured 6mW on the REFL diode with 2W input to HAM1 and JAC unlocked yesterday. This corresponds to 0.58V on the shutter trigger diode. The threshold cannot be set above 2V, which means we would unlock when 21mW hit the diode. Jennie Wright added a ND05A into the path before the refl diode, and another ND05A in front of the shutter diode.
Now, with 2W input to HAM1 and JAC unlocked, we should have 2mW on the REFL diode, and the shutter diode votlage is 0.18V. The threshold of 2V now will shut the shutter with 22mW on it.
Gaurdian changes:
The JAC error signals are normalized by the PSL input power if we use the laser power guardian to change the input power, so we shouldn't need a power scaling like 89708. People have been using the rotation stage instead of the guardian to adjust the power because the laser power guardian would go into fault if the power was below 1W (people have been going below 1W while HAM1 is vented.) Jenne Driggers adjusted the fault in LASER_POWER and added a 200mW state to the laser power guardian, so now we should use this guardian whenever we want to change powers, even below 1W.
We also hard coded the gain used for locking JAC in the down state, although this could be reverted to allow the power normalization to work again, once that has been updated to take into account the new ND filters. Once this was done, we could lock JAC at a variety of powers and also change the requested power after it was locked.
Georgia B and I also had a look at the IMC guardian, which has not generally been able to lock the IMC except at 2W. There was some code in the down state of IMC LOCK that was supposed to adjsut settings for lcokign at different power levels, these were unused except for the IN1 gain setting used for acquisition. Georgia and I adjusted some of these numbers and watched if the IMC would lock, we didn't take much time to test it but we did once twice see the IMC lock with 10W + input power, so that is promising.
At Elennas' good suggestion, I added the IMC_power_adjust_func() to the IMC_LOCK's ACQUIRE state, so that it will adjust the IMC's FASTGAIN, so that the fast gain won't be wildly high when trying to acquire at higher powers.
I did modify the function, so that if we're in ACQUIRE, it uses a FASTGAIN 5dB lower than the operating nominal gain. This makes it match the 2W acquisition situation, where the fastgain was always acquiring at 0dB, and then for a 2W IMC lock would increase during the BOOST state to 5 dB.
The IMC will lock at 10W, but it takes a long time. It's a little happier at 8W. It's still perfectly happy at 2W (which makes sense, since none of the 2W settings have changed).
I'm pausing any further testing, since the Xarm is open for our green peek.
Locked with 2W input, JAC REFL A LF signal was constantly railing regardless of the purge air level. Turns out that we were using two stages of 1:10 whitening.
I went to the floor and turned one stage off on the front panel of the RFPD DC interface D1102079 (circuit diagram D1102060) in ISC R1 rack and disabled the corresponding dewhitening filter. I could have disabled both, but with an ND0.5 filter JennieW was installing, this will do the job for now.
I always forget this but gray switch up=1 stage active, middle=2stages, down=0. I put two labels on the front panel so I don't have to remember.
Tue Mar 31 10:10:46 2026 INFO: Fill completed in 10min 42secs
FAMIS Link: 39344
Only CPS channels which look higher at high frequencies (see attached) would be the following:
In the bash window we get this note:
"BSC high freq noise is elevated for these sensor(s)!!!: BSITMy_ST1_CPSINF_H3 "
TITLE: 03/31 Day Shift: 1430-2330 UTC (0730-1630 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Planned Engineering
OUTGOING OPERATOR: None
CURRENT ENVIRONMENT:
SEI_ENV state: MAINTENANCE
Wind: 2mph Gusts, 1mph 3min avg
Primary useism: 0.02 μm/s
Secondary useism: 0.11 μm/s
QUICK SUMMARY:
From the alog, it sounds like HAM1 checks will continue; when this is done the move will be venting the corner and prepping for opening HAM2+3 (and dome next week...but no need to get ahead of ourselves); also when HAM1 work is done, hard close GV2 (x-arm). SQZ work also continues.
Chilly sub-32degF out. LVEA door says "laser safe", but from Ibrahim's emails yesterday & alog activity, it is the LVEA is in LASER HAZARD BIFURCATED at HAM1.
Cleaning Top Of HAM3 Deferred This Morning
kim/nellie/randy noticed that HAM3 was UNLOCKED, so they did NOT clean of HAM3. LVEA is also "bifurcated safe", which would require goggles and that's not safe when climbing on top of chambers when it's hard to see with goggles on. So top-of-HAM3 cleaning will need to wait (gave betsy a heads up on this).
Highlights include ndscope combined file and DAQ channel completion on the command line. Timeout to lock screen should be fixed so that the workstation won't lock you out after a few minutes. You may need to go into Settings->Power Manager->Display and Settings->Screensaver to turn them off.
This was an OS packages update. Conda packages were not updated.
Jennie W, Keita K, Betsy W, Camilla C
At the end of the day (for the day's activities to get to this point see Sheila's alog #89701) we were in chamber trying to see PRMI flashes in the POP in-vac path on -Y side of HAM1. We tried to lock JAC at 20W input so the flashses would be clearer on the card but it turns out anything over about 5W input puts the trigger PD above its threshold so the shutter in front of the JAC REFL PD and JAC WFS QPDS closes. Keita had Camill and I measure the power and for 2W input we get 5-6mW on this REFL PD and around 3mW on each QPD. This means that we shouldn't try and raise the trigger threshold (currently at 1.2V) as at 20W we will have 50mW on the REFL PD. I thought we had more of a margin than this.
What this means is we want to lock the JAC every time at 2W and then scale the gain in lock so only a low level of power goes to the REFL PD.
I copied some code from the ISC_library to do this. The new function is the state decorator JAC_pwr_adjust_function. It should scale the gain in JAC-L_SERVO by the requested input power as measured at IMC-PWR_IN_OUTMON while the JAC-LOCK guardian is in the 'LOCKED' state. It compiles now but I haven't tested it on the IFO yet as we left IMC and JAC in down, the input power at 100mW and the lightpipe closed at the end of the day.
This morning I noticed that the oil temp for the Kobelco was high at ~150F (nominal is around 110-115F). Looking at the sight glass for the oil level, it was high compared to it's usual level during operation. (see attached, off line is when compressor is off, RUN is the level during operation)
Gerardo and I confirmed the oil pump was running and the oil line pressure was ok through the control panel. We then opened the ball valve for the coolant line which goes to the oil cooler. This very quickly dropped the oil temp back to nominal, and there was some tuning done to keep it at ~115F.
Gerardo then contacted the rep who replaced the oil pump on this unit a couple of weeks ago, and confirmed it was just a matter of adding more coolant flow to the oil cooler. The oil level at the sight glass then returned to it's nominal level.
No issues since, but we will continue to monitor.
Sheila, Camilla, Sophie
Following Sheila's finding last week that the nominal ZM2 PSAMS settings of 3.15 V is giving us an oval beam, 89675, we set ZM2 PSAMs to 4.5V and immediately got better flashes in green and IR on FCES. Moved ZM2 to increase flashes to be ~55 on green PD C and occasionally up to 1.2 on IR PD D with CLF injected.
Sheila could lock green FC for ~10 seconds. With the SEED injected it did not seem to be co-resonant and she needed to turn off SUS feedback to help green FC locking.
We then locked FC servo (wouldn't stay locked for long, but was able to move FC1, FC2 and ZM2 PSAMS to maximize the maximum locked values. Got to 58 on PD FC_TRANS_C for 4.8V or 4.9V. Leaving at 4.85V. Could further increase to 66 on PD FC_TRANS_C iteratively with FC1 and FC2, see attached. Locked for ~20 s max.
To get light (100e-6) on SQZT7 OPO_IR PD, we needed to move ZM3 +100urad in PIT on the sliders.
I then thought that we could go to the location we have SQZT7 IR light and light on the HAM7 WFS and movve ZM3 towards the place where we have known FC flashes and bring back the alignment on the HAM7WFS with ZM2 and FC1. I did this but it maybe unsurprisingly didn't;t work. In hindsight maybe I could have used a different combination of mirrors.
To get light (100e-6) on SQZT7 OPO_IR PD, still needed to move ZM3 +100urad in PIT on the sliders. At which point there is no flashes on FCES green or IR. to get max light on the SQZT7 PD (0.0018) I had to change ZM3 from P,Y (-474, -367) for FC flashes to (-334, -309) for SQZT7 light OR move ZM2 from P,Y (429,132) for FC flashes to (-747,1) for SQZT7 light and centered WFs (not inc. WFS A PIT). In going from SQZT7 light to towards FC light, the beam on HAM7 WFS moves positive in PITCH and positive in YAW. This corresponds to
| From SQZT7 light to FC light | ||
| DOF | PIT | YAW |
| WFS A and B | Positive | Positive |
| ZM1 | Positive sliders | Positive sliders |
| ZM2 | Positive sliders | Negative Sliders |
| ZM3 | Negative Sliders | Negative Sliders |
| FC1 (?) | Positive sliders | Positive sliders |
I changed H1:SQZ-RLF_QPD_A_SEG_3_VOLTS from 1.31087 to 10 to stop this broken WFS A QPD segment from effecting the position on the WFs so much. Didn't make much of a difference though.
When JAC and thus IMC were both locked with 2W, it was possible to see PRMI flashes on a card. It was like a flash per 30 sec or so and it was quite frustrating, but I was able to see that the beam was off-centered into -Y direction significantly.
In the attached, the edge of the card is right in front of the +X-Y edge of the POP red-green dichroic (I'm inserting the card from +Y door). You would think that the beam is clipped but it is not quite, maybe it is clipped a bit on the +X+Y edge of the air-vac splitter downstream, but the transmission of that splitter hits the PM, goes through the lens and toward LSC and LSC POP sensors. It's funny that the centering on the lens looked better than on the dichroic but I might have been tricked by 0 deg AOI VS 45 deg.
See the second attachment for the layout. What I thought was the actual PRMI flash path is drawin in cyan.
TITLE: 03/30 Day Shift: 1430-2330 UTC (0730-1630 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Planned Engineering
INCOMING OPERATOR: None
SHIFT SUMMARY:
IFO is in IDLE for PLANNED MAINTENANCE
HAM 1 team has been working on JAC from the bifurcated HAM1 area and the control room throughout the day. SPI and BHSS work continued in the optics lab.
IX has been a bit finicky and tripped the SW WDs. They didn't seem like they were untripping and we were seeing the counts get worse with the damping loops. Additionally, the rocker switch death flashed a few times. Jim fixed this by turning off SUS damping, then letting the ISI damp until counts visibly went down before turning on damping everywhere.
BSC2 platform work and HAM3 cabling continued.
LOG:
| Start Time | System | Name | Location | Lazer_Haz | Task | Time End |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14:49 | FAC | Kim, Nellie | LVEA | Y | Technical Cleaning | 16:48 |
| 15:14 | SUS | Randy | LVEA | Y | Handrails, BSC2 | 17:46 |
| 16:03 | SUS | Elenna | Optics Lab | Y | BHSS | 18:30 |
| 16:04 | SQZ | Sheila, Camilla | LVEA | Y | Detransitioning LVEA Hazard to Bifurcated Hazard | 16:33 |
| 16:07 | SUS | Jeff | Optics Lab | Y | Extracting chassis part | 16:16 |
| 16:16 | JAC | Keita | LVEA | Y | JAC | 18:30 |
| 16:30 | EE | Fil | LVEA | LOCAL (bifurcated) | HAM3 Cabling | 18:30 |
| 16:52 | SUS | Mitchell | LVEA | LOCAL (bifurcated) | Parts | 17:43 |
| 16:53 | JAC | Jennie | LVEA | LOCAL (bifurcated) | Helping keita with JAC | 17:25 |
| 16:55 | OPS | Ryan C | CER | N | Testing out dust monitors | 17:42 |
| 17:00 | SUS | Oli | Optics Lab | Y | BHSS | 18:30 |
| 17:13 | SUS | Betsy | LVEA | LOCAL (bifurcated) | Walkabout | 18:00 |
| 17:21 | OPS | Jenne | LVEA | Y | Talk to crew on floor | 17:25 |
| 17:25 | SUS | Sina, Jeff | Optics Lab | Y | SPI | 18:30 |
| 17:34 | FAC | Kim | EX | N | Technical Cleaning | 18:18 |
| 18:24 | Jennie | LVEA | LOCAL (bifurcated) | Signage | 18:29 | |
| 19:05 | SUS | Oli, Elenna | Optics lab | Y | BHSS work | 20:18 |
| 19:30 | FAC | Randy | LVEA | Y | Emod. work | 21:08 |
| 20:01 | EE | Fil | LVEA | Y (bifurcated) | HAM3 Cabling | 23:59 |
| 20:14 | FAC | Chris | LVEA | Y (bifurcated) | grabbing wipes | 20:27 |
| 20:25 | CER | Ryan C | CER | N | Dust monitor work | 21:40 |
| 20:29 | SUS | Jeff | Optics Lab | Y | SPI | 22:19 |
| 20:30 | SUS | Sina | Optics Lab | Y | SPI | 00:29 |
| 20:48 | SEI | Jim | LVEA | Y(bifurcated) | Check on IX | 21:02 |
| 21:03 | SUS | Elenna | Optics Lab | Y (bifurcated) | BHSS | 22:19 |
| 21:52 | VAC | Gerardo | EX, EY, MX, MY, LVEA | Y (bifurcated lvea) | inventory check | 08:52 |
| 21:59 | VAC | Jordan | LVEA | Y (bifurcated) | inventory check | 23:08 |
| 22:19 | SUS | Jim | Optic Lab | Y | SPI | 23:08 |
| 22:32 | SUS | Keita, Betsy | LVEA | Y(bifurcated) | HAM1 | 01:32 |
| 22:43 | SUS | Jennie | LVEA | Y(bifurcated) | HAM1 | 23:43 |
| 23:13 | SUS | Jim | Optics Lab | Y | SPI | 01:13 |
| 23:16 | OPS | Camilla | Optics Lab, LVEA | Y | Device delivery | 23:28 |
| 23:18 | AUS | Thomas, Georgia | LVEA | Y(bifurcated) | Walkabout | 00:18 |
