During facilities annual flow test and inspection of all site fire hydrants, it was noted that hydrant L9, which resides on the vertex interior nearest the FCE was not fully closing and bleeding a small amount of water. This issue was made worse when an outside group was invited to help troubleshoot the problem and overtightened the stem to the point that it was completely broken. Following this, I (with the assistance of locate) located the service valve and isolated supply of firewater to the hydrant. Given the age of the hydrant, repairing it was cost prohibitive, so a new hydrant was installed. It is probably worth mentioning here that the thrust block placed back in ~97' was sizeable. Almost too large for the mini excavator to remove. This came as a big surprise to all involved and should be considered in the future if any hydrant excavation takes place. Also, the as-built location of this hydrants service valve is incorrect. The drawing details the valve being southwest of the hydrant, when it is in fact to the northeast. E. Otterman R. McCarthy T. Guidry
Sheila, Camilla. Saved to camilla.compton/Documents/sqz/templates/dtt/Fringe_wrapping.xml
ZM2,5 Fridge Wrapping with No SQZ light
As Sheila suggested in 86836, the amount of backscatter we are seeing from SQZ should be due to light from the IFO being backscattered rather than any excess SQZ light. To confirm this I took SQZ DOWN, mis- aligned FC, blocked all three SQZ beams on SQZT0 and re-opened the beam-diverter so that the IFO light could get into HAM7 but there was no SQZ generated light. The ZM2 and ZM5 scatter shelves were the same in both this and the nominal SQZ configurations, confirming all backscattered light is coming from the IFO. Plot attached. This plot does show our ZM5 scatter has increased since 2024, ZM2 is the same.
I did the same with the 30Hz injection too, saved to Fringe_wrapping_nosqz.xml, refs 0-8 are no sqz beams, refs 9-17 are nominal FDS. Plot attached, if anything, the shoulders of the 30Hz peak are larger with no sqz beams, so again, there is no difference.
ZM2,5 Fridge Wrapping with Different Alignments on OFI_PD_A
In FRS # 35457 and 87071, we theorized that the backscatter could be off the OFI_PD_A which we shows out beam is clipping, when we change the alignment to this PD using ZM4/5, we change the level of light on OFI_PD_A, showing we are clipping and not centered on the PD, but this also changes the level of SQZ so it's hard to compare. Unsure if there's a real difference, plot attached and ndscope. It's possible that with more light on PD_A (less clipping) there is a more scatter and a secondary ZM5 scatter shelf ~25-40Hz. Would want to repeat or misalign more to confirm.
References on Fringe_wrapping.xml | No Injection | ZM5 Inj | ZM2 Inj |
Nominal FDS (ZM5 Yaw -460urad, -4.6dB, OFI_PD_A = 0.031) |
0 | 1,2 | 3,4 |
No SQZ light, BeamDiv Open to IFO | 5 | 6,7 | 8,9 |
FDS, ZM5 Yaw -510urad, -3.4dB, OFI_PD_A = 0.024 | 10 | 11,12 | 13,14 |
FDS, ZM5 Yaw -440urad, -3.4dB, OFI_PD_A = 0.033 | 15 | 16,17 | 18,19 |
Other ideas that haven't been done yet: change the temperature of SFI2 and repeat backscatter measurements, repeat above with increased alignment changes the OFI_PD_A changes.
Elenna realized while I was doing this that we should turn off the 13Hz Roll mode damping before injecting into ZM2/5 as this increased DARM noise might confusing the damping signals.
To turn off the roll mode damping: sitemap > SUS > Bounce Roll > DAMPING Filters. Then turn the gain of the one damping to zero (already should be a 10s Tramp).
Mon Sep 29 10:09:29 2025 INFO: Fill completed in 9min 25secs
Note TCs did not saturate at -200C today, weather is changing.
Note that plot is being produced by ndscope-test. The time axis label is no longer being cut.
TITLE: 09/29 Day Shift: 1430-2330 UTC (0730-1630 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Observing at 155Mpc
OUTGOING OPERATOR: Ibrahim
CURRENT ENVIRONMENT:
SEI_ENV state: CALM
Wind: 9mph Gusts, 6mph 3min avg
Primary useism: 0.02 μm/s
Secondary useism: 0.42 μm/s
QUICK SUMMARY:
Got called at 11:50 after PRMI locking failed for the second time. As I was prepping to move some mirrors to try and lock PRMI (initial alignment was done), PRMI locked and then DRMI.
IFO just needed some threat by opservation.
Watched guardian go into NLN as of 07:14 UTC and now OBSERVING.
Reset myself as OWL.
TITLE: 09/29 Eve Shift: 2330-0500 UTC (1630-2200 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Observing at 151Mpc
INCOMING OPERATOR: Ibrahim
SHIFT SUMMARY: Locked for 5 hours. The relock had an odd SRM M3 Wd trip during DRMI acquisition, but once untriped it went through Mich Bright, then PRMI, then it got DRMI.
LOG:
I clicked submit on the alog above and then it unlocked. It was so coincident that I did, for a brief moment, wonder if there was any way it could have been related. Then my common sense came back. I'm going to have it start an initial alignment and then set it up for Ibrahim to give the best chance.
Looks like when one of the triggers for SRCL turned on, it tripped M3 a handful of seconds later. Another odd thing I'm seeing after I've untripped and tried PRMI is that the triggering seems to be turning on and off rapidly.
Nothing obvious.
Back to Observing at 0005 UTC. After I cycled through MICH Bright, PRMI, then DRMI caught and it went back up. Not sure why SRM tripped.
TITLE: 09/28 Day Shift: 1430-2330 UTC (0730-1630 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Observing at 154Mpc
INCOMING OPERATOR: TJ
SHIFT SUMMARY: Quiet shift, we stayed locked the entire time.
LOG: N/A
The LSC front end has an FPU (floating point unit) error. The recent range drop post glitch looks to line up with a ~50 SNR low frequency glitch as seen on the Omicron plot on nuc27, and 2.5 hours ago there's some extra noise in the low frequency SQZ blrms. The recent glitch look to be from =< 450Hz, as it's seen only in BAND_1-5.
TITLE: 09/28 Eve Shift: 2330-0500 UTC (1630-2200 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Observing at 156Mpc
OUTGOING OPERATOR: Ryan C
CURRENT ENVIRONMENT:
SEI_ENV state: CALM
Wind: 9mph Gusts, 4mph 3min avg
Primary useism: 0.02 μm/s
Secondary useism: 0.39 μm/s
QUICK SUMMARY: Locked for almost 7 hours, calm environment.
Sun Sep 28 10:10:39 2025 INFO: Fill completed in 10min 35secs
TITLE: 09/28 Day Shift: 1430-2330 UTC (0730-1630 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Observing at 153Mpc
OUTGOING OPERATOR: Ibrahim
CURRENT ENVIRONMENT:
SEI_ENV state: CALM
Wind: 9mph Gusts, 7mph 3min avg
Primary useism: 0.02 μm/s
Secondary useism: 0.35 μm/s
QUICK SUMMARY:
Got called at 4:50 due to a mysterious SRM trip at 4:47 AM. IFO was in SRC ALIGN for initial alignment and SRM was railing during PREP_FOR_SRY. ST2 and ST3 sus tripped, which makes me think that initial alignment may have caused it? Microseism is on the rise but nothing jumps at me otherwise (attached).
Either way, I untripped it and waited until IFO got to DRMI which it just did. Flashes look good. Will continue light monitoring but I think guardia can take it from here.
Reset myself as the OWL.
Taking a look at some of the signals, SRM tripped at 11:47:36, about 30 seconds after it was aligned. An oscillation started ~5 seconds before the WD trip. ALIGN_IFO was starting SRC, the motion was mostly seen by the lower stage osems, M1 did not trip (barely, LF and RT saw an RMS of 140 where the trip threshold is 150). LF and RT seemed to see the largest motion, DAMP_Y_INMON was much larger than P which also tracks with that.
As Ryan correctly identified, the issue to why the SQZ dropped was there was no enough green power to keep the OPO ISS locked. So he had to reduced the setpoint in sqzparams from 80uW to 75uW. It wouldn't surprise me if this happens again as we are still close to the botton of the ISS's range.
Tomorrow AM we'll check if we can get any more power with the SHG waveplate, otherwise we may need to realign through the AOM and into the fiber again as we last did in 86323 or move crystal spots.
Here is a summary of some results from the open loop gain measurements of DHARD Y and CHARD Y, and the implementation of a new CHARD P low pass:
DHARD Y
I measured the DHARD Y open loop gain, results shown here. The dark blue trace shows the original measurement, showing 17 degrees of phase margin and gain peaking of 10 dB. Looking at the loop design, there are three different boost filters applied to DHARD Y, compared here. These boosts in combination seem to be destroying all the phase of the loop. I took a measurement with the 0.9 Hz boost disengaged (FM3), which is shown in the green trace. Then, I disengaged the 0.5 Hz boost (FM4) and remeasured, shown in the red trace. This improved the phase margin to 32 degrees. This obviously resulted in less microseismic suppression. I adjusted the 0.5 Hz boost (FM4) and decided we should operate without the boost in FM3. This plot compares the original loop error signal and RMS with all three boosts (gold), the error signal and RMS without FM3 and FM4 boosts (green) and then error signal and RMS with the updated FM4 boost (red). The RMS increased 50% without both boosts on, the improved boost returns the RMS to that value. There is now more phase margin in the loop. Updated in guardian and ASC high gain script, SDFed (1,2).
CHARD Y
I measured the CHARD Y open loop gain, results shown here. The file had an old reference trace from 2023, shown in bluegreen in the reference. The gray trace shows the first measurement I made today of CHARD Y. The gain appeared to be way too low. I raised the gain to match the old reference, which was a gain increase of 6 dB. Here is a comparison of the RMS of CHARD Y from 14 hours ago (bluegreen reference) and now (red live). The microseism level is the same between these two measurements. Overall, this reduces the RMS of the loop, so I think this is a good adjustment. This is updated in the guardian and ASC high gain script, also SDFed.
CHARD P
I implemented a new CHARD P low pass filter to reduce CHARD P coupling that is apparent in coherence measurements (example).
Here is a comparison of the old controller (red) with the new controller (blue). This replaces the lowpass filter in FM8 with the filter in FM9. I also disengaged the old 200 Hz lowpass that was previously in FM10, as it wasn't doing much. SDFs (1,2). Guardian code and ASC high gain script updated.
The coherence of DARM with CHARD P has reduced, as expected, and increased for CHARD Y, also as expected. I have since created a new lowpass for CHARD Y that should reduce the coherence and is ready for testing at the next opportunity (comparison).
Here is an improved CHARD Y lowpass at 10 Hz. Saved in FM6. The sacrifice is about 7 degrees, my previous measurement showed that there is 37 degrees at the UGF.
I don't see a difference in DARM, but the DARM coherence with CHARD Y has dropped. There is no change in the loop RMS either (comparing two times with similar microseism levels).
I updated the guardian to use this filter, and I also edited the ASC higain script.
Yesterday I went into the optics lab and re-measured the coupling between input beam motion and PD array. While taking measurements I noticed that the injection could not be seen on the AC readouts of the PDs (example) so I tuned the temperature of the laser via changing the resistance of the controller, I went from ~10kOhms up to 13 kOHms and down to 8kOhms and while I found places where the noise reduced see example of noisy trace here, I couldn't find anywhere with the controller where the trace renamed stably in the non-noisy state. I then decided to tune the pump current down from 130mA to ~100mA and eventually found a somewhat stable place. I still had to wait through some periods of noise to trigger the measurement of the PDs.
I alos increased the modulation ampltitude to 80 mVpp. The counts on the QPD LCD readout were 10672, see image.
When the laser is in its quiet state the AC PD traces should comfortably fit on the screen of the osclloscopes with a 5mV scale, with the laser noisy this is more like 100mV, I also use 100mV scale for the QPD, I didn't change it when I reduced the noise on the laser.
The noisy state for the QPD outputs is here, the quiet state is here.
For each measurement I used a capture range of 400ms on the time axis of the scope and 125 000 samples selected on the 'ACQUIRE' menu.
The final measurements are:
PD 1 - 4 measured at AC: T0012ALL.CSV
PD 5 - 8 measured at AC: T0014ALL.CSV
QPD X, Y and SUM channels measured at AC: T0013ALL.CSV
The two DC measurements are going to be averaged so I didn't wait for a quiet time to measure them.
PD 1 - 4 measured at DC: T0011ALL.CSV
PD 5 - 8 measured at DC: T0010ALL.CSV
To save you need to click on the menu button and change the resolution to be'Full', the format to be CSV and the channels captured to be 'ALL', the file number will roll over every time you save so you don't need to enter it manually.
The code to produce this plot is in my optics lab code repo.
The graph of the TF from horizontal dither on the input mirror to horizontal dither across the array, shows that we are not getting much coherent modulation of the light intensity on the PDs at 100Hz which is the dither frequency. Either my code is wrong or I need to increase the dither amplitude for the mirror.
The maths to work this out was
A time series = abs(dither in direction horizontal to bench on QPD in V)/ (motion horizontal to bench volts on QPD/mm moved horizontal to bench on QPD)
B time series = AC voltage on each PD / mean of DC voltage on each PD
TF = CSD (B, A) / PSD (A, A)
I used gwpy for the calculations this time.
The attached plot shows each PD in the array as a different colour with magnitude on the top and phase on the bottom.
We realised in the analysis that we should be using :
H_amp on QPD = Xcos theta + Y sin theta where theta is the angle between the X axis of the QPD and the horizontal scan direction of the beam worked out from our previous calibration measurments, 14 degrees.
This gives a different value for the couplings. All the PDs other than PD6 did not have coherences 0.9 or over so I only attach the final TF for PD6. We increased the dither amplitude after this to improve the measurement of the other PDs.