Nutsinee, Elli

When we arrived the IMC was not locking so we changed some settings to get it to lock.  Changed PSL differacted power to 7% up from 3% by changing H1:PSL-ISS_REFSIGNAL to -1.96V.PSL.  The PSL power was 1W when 2W  was requested at the rotation stage.  So we searched for home, and now requested power matches again.

We tried to lock the arms in green without success.  The X-arm PLL was not locked, we changed Crystal frequency to 100MHz and now it is locking, however the ALS_XARM and Y_ARM guardian still report faults "PLL; PHD", and "Ref. Cav. Power", which we couldn't fix.  We noticed the reference cavitytTPD has dropped from 0.85 to 0.7 V in the last 24 hours (see plot.)

We aligned the corner station optics using the oplev trend to where they were last night in order to do the HWS alignment.  We noticed BS oplev Yaw is showing zero as output.  Without the green from the arms this alignment was difficult.  in any case, we are starting to think that this HWSY alignment is proving too difficult with the current (wrong) in-vacuum lens installed-  the beam return beam is the same size as the mirrors we are using, and we have never been able to get rid of clipping patterns on the beam.

Nic, Sheila, Evan, Stefan

- Turned on ITMX PIT oplev (ITMY PIT OPLEV was already on)
- DC coupled SRM PIT oplev turned on.
- Tried new SRCL input matrix YAW:
   AS 36    AI    AQ     BI    BQ         
   OLD:   -0.6   0.3    0.3   0
   NEW:    0     1.0    0     0
- This seemed better at higher power for RF offsets, but is too early for judgement.
- Also tried new SRCL input matrix PIT:
   AS 36    AI    AQ     BI    BQ         
   OLD:    0     0      2     0
   NEW:   -0.5  -0.5    0     0
- We didn't keep this one though because it seemed worse at low power.

- Attempts later tonight were hampered by winds up to 30MpH in the corner.

We've noticed two more examples of epics channels freezing for a few seconds.  Yesterday (July 9 16:25:09 UTC) and tonight (0:22:49 UTC July 11)

Nic, Sheila

We put an excitation into the HAM6 ISI ISO Y filter bank, (30000 counts at 0.3 Hz) from about 3:17-3:19 UTC July 11.  We then did a by eye fit  (on a log log scale)for a fringe wrapping model.  We expected the excitation to result in 30 um motion of the OMC, but we had to use 36 um to get the fringe speed right. We get an amplitude reflectivity of 1.6e-7 for the single pass shelf. (compare to 1e-5 measured in 17919)  We see no evidence of a second shelf or a shelf in the null stream.  

We plan to make measurements in exactly the same was as 17919, if we get a chance again tonight.

Stefan, Sheila, Nic, Evan

We remeasured the relative strength of the EX and EY ESDs in full lock. EX was driven with the high-range driver (40 V/V dc), and EY was driven with the low-noise driver (2 V/V dc). All other things being equal, we expect a relative strength of 20 V/V between the two actuation chains.

We found that the relative strength is instead 30 V/V (see attachment, which includes a digital gain of 30 ct/ct in the EY path). When we first did this measurement (back in May, pre-discharging), the relative strength was more like 50 V/V. So we are closer to the nominal value.

We successfully transitioned control of DARM from EX to EY with this new digital gain. We also took a quick DARM OLTF, both before an after the transition. The attachment shows an old, pre-vent OLTF (blue), today's OLTF with EX (green), and today's OLTF with EY (red).

Scott L. Ed P. Rodney H.

7/8/15
Cleaned 68 meters of tube, bellows, and crevices ending at HSW-2-093. Test results posted below.
Removed lights and started relocating equipment to next section and hanging lights.

7/9/15
Cleaned 79.6 meters of tube and ending at HSW-2-089. Bellows and crevices still need to be cleaned.

7/10/15
The bellows and crevices on the previous section were cleaned and tested. Results posted below.
The lights were removed and relocated to the next section. The crew started vacuuming the support tubes and capping them.   21 meters of tube cleaned.

 A total of 227.6 meters of Y-Arm tube has been cleaned.

 

Chris S. Joe D.

7/8/15
Installed aluminum strips on 39 joints beginning 604 meters from the corner station and continuing north and caulked 13 of those.

7/9/15
Finished caulking the joints from yesterday and cleaned 10 additional joints ending 756 meters north of the corner station. 

plot 1: PSL FSS TPD (top), PMC TRANS (bottom) - 7 days of data - channels changed behavior about 4 days ago, and TPD fell below 0.9 sometime in the last day or so.

plot 2: PMC REFL (top), PMC TRANS (bottom) - 7 days of data - PMC REFL climbing faster in last 24 hours or so.

plot 3: Ch7: PSL OSC BOXHUM (upper right) seems to be correlated with other three channels in the first 1/2 of the plot.

- IFO in commissioner's hands most of the afternoon

- during lunch, IFO locked at 10W, and I raised to 15W about 30 minutes later, it held about 15 minutes, then LL

- minimal activities, no LVEA entry

Current:

- locked, commissioning going on

- PSL FSS TPD flashing yellow, since it's below 0.9V - see plots in alog

- RobertS and DickG and Nutsinee and Elli all have weekend work permits, #5343, #5344, and #5342, respectively

The temporary T240 as ground sensor for ETMX SEI sensor correction was swapped on Tuesday 7 July with an STS2.  Attached are spectra comparing the signals.  Obviously we can't compare signals at the same time so the T240 time is 3 July at 0200 local and the STS2 time is 9 July at 0200.  Based on the wind trends, these are pretty quiet times for wind.

To assess the stationarity of the Spectra, I walked before and after this time a few hours on July 3 and the variability below a Hz can be many factors.  With the 0200 July 3 signals as reference, I walked before and after 0200 on 9 July and really found no close match, again especially at lower frequencies.  The Z DOF of the T240 below about 30mHz seems to be main outlier but above about 200 mHz the traces are maybe within a factor mostly.  There is an exception to that centered around 0.6Hz with the T240 showing a bit higher amplitude especially on the Y DOF.  Maybe we could argue that our calibrations for these two instruments are correct.

Leonid.Prokhorov, Jeffrey.Kissel

We continue the charge measurements on ETMs. The data are beginning to be consistent with a small increase in charge, consistently negative.
For the past few weeks since the discharging the charge has been small (<10 [V] Effective Bias Voltage), and roughly consistent with a parent Gaussian distribution with a mean about 0.0 [V] Effective Bias Voltage. However, as we get more data, we're beginning to see a case for a slow negative charging of the test masses (about 2-5 V/week) in at least half the quadrants (ETMX UR, UL, and LR; ETMY (the pitch estimates of) UR, UL, and LR). The uncertainty of these measurements is too large to state that the trend is statistically significant, but yellow flags have gone up. 

This argues that we should continue roughly daily (say, thrice a week) measurements of the charge, and we need to continue to do so for another week or three.

There are three sets of plots, each which show the same data in a different way:
(1) ETMX.png & ETMY.png show the "raw" data, where the result of each estimate of the effective bias voltage shown *since* the discharging. Each single data point is an estimate of the effective bias voltage, i.e. the charge, as determined by driving the test mass while varying the requested bias voltage and measuring the response with the optic's optical lever.
(2) ETMX_Mean.png & ETMY_Mean.png shows both the mean and standard deviation, and weighted mean and sqrt(weighted variance) of the charge measurements for a given day (which can be from ~4 to ~15 of these 12 minute measurements per mean point). We believe this better shows the long-term trend of the charge.
(3) ETMX2015.png & ETMY_2015.png shows the mean charging measurement results since January 2015, i.e. it includes data when the test masses were charged and shows the discharge which happened in Mid-June.

END X has been transitioned to the NEG pump. The main turbo is isolated but still spinning.

Pressure has remained at ~2.2e-8 torr.

Kyle, Gerardo, John

The NEG pump has been valved into the END Y volume and all appears well.

The plot shows 2 hours of the BSC chamber pressure. Initially the main turbo was pumping the station along with the LN2 pump and open to the tube. The LN2 pump had been opened to the BSC earlier in the day and we let the pressure settle over lunch.

With the turbo still connected you can see the pressure fall as we open the NEG to the volume. Next the turbo was valved out and the pressure returns to near the starting value.

So far so good!

(evan jenne nic)

We wanted to investigate the OMC alignment/backscatter problem. Driving the OMC SUS in Yaw has been known to cause backscatter noise due to the modulation of the optical path length when the OMC moves in Yaw.

Our procedure was to lock the vertex optics in a bright michelson configuration (a state has been added to the IFO_ALIGN guardian to make this easy). Then we wanted to drive the OMC in yaw and choose the yaw->longitudinal matrix element such that the center of rotation would be about the input beam, rather than the omc center of mass. This would be determined by minimizing the scatter as measured by either OMC trans, or the MICH error point.

I was surprised that we were not able to induce any significant backscatter fringe wrapping noise in this configuration. We drove the OMC SUS in longitude up to the point that the beam was misaligning enough to noticibly affect the OMC DC trans.

We also drove the ISI table directly by putting a 1Hz 1mm injection into the Y isolation loop error point. 

Driving the path length, we both listened and had a live spectrum running. We saw no evidence of scatter in either OMC trans or MICH_IN1.

We will need to think if there is another configuration (available to use without arms) that will be more sensitive to backscatter.