I noticed that the PD offset nulling script for PRMI did not run for some reason. I looked into the script and found that this was due to too-many PD channels requested to tdsavg at once. So I modified the script so that it divides the PDs into a number of group. This seems running OK at a expense of the processing time. The modified script is named as lsc/h1/scripts/pdOffsetNull_ver2.py. I also checked this script into the svn.

• X axis (lateral): +0.03 mm (north)
  • Tolerance: ±3.0 mm
• Y axis (longitudinal): +0.3 mm (west)
  • Tolerance: ±3.0 mm
• Z axis (vertical): +0.9 mm (high)
  • Tolerance: ±3.0 mm

I have begun setup for the pitch/yaw alignment; will finish fine set tomorrow morning and we will commence with SR3 pitch/yaw alignment.

BS ISI tripped at 12:25pm. Certainly due to a second earthquake (5.8 southern east pacific rise)

FYI - The EY wind channel died ~2 hours ago.  Richard reports that "someone was working out there and it's probably related."

While poking around looking at screens in the control room this morning, I noticed the ETMx OL sum is was low.  Some trends reveal that there was a drastic drop of the laser power on the QPD on Sat morning.  A trend of ETMx signals, as well as some ISI and HEPI signals (not shown), indicate those systems are ~healthy.  So, it does not seem that the physical pointing of the ETMx via SUS or SEI has changed the pointing on the OL.  Note, this happened a day after the Fri EQ which caused all the ISIs to trip.  Likely we should investigate the OL itself to see what's going on with the laser beam/QPD.

Arnaud reports that at ~midnight last Friday night, all of the ISI tripped due to an earthquake.  There was a magnitude 6 EQ in Mexico May 10 07:36 UTC which correlates to the ISI's tripping at 07:50 UTC.

Gerardo says there is an earth quake on the oregon coast, so far end X is the only one tripped.

Here is the last 30 days of YEND temperatures. Shown is the LVEA average and two of the four zones from which the average is derived.

The large positive spike is experimentation with chilled water flow - (Robert and John on 4/20).

The smaller negative going spikes are not explained but may be related to human actions as I have stopped and started chillers several times in this period for diagnostic purposes.

It's not clear what caused the trips from this morning. The ones from Friday night seem to be related to earthquakes.

It's not a problem for now, even if we use oplev damping, because the oscillation leaking to the oplev error signal (attached, a tiny bump at 0.32Hz for green curve) is small enough.

Anyway, it seems like this has been going on for the past  four weeks (second attachment), and even if it doesn't get worse, oplev people should look at it after the integration test.

Oplev SUM peak-peak was a factor of 10 worse before it settled down to the current state (beginning of the second attachment), but I cannot see the raw data so we cannot say what was going on then.

no restarts reported.

• HAM5:  SR3--small adjustments to make this morning
• TCSy Table work (need hazard probably by 2pm)
• TCSx 2-day run with laser
• Hartman Table work
• Richard:  Beckhoff modules, fiber work, EY ESD cont.,
• Travis ACB:  box & bagged,  blade pull down
• Staging Pull Down:  Unit2:  electronics issue for testing, Unit 3 pulled springs Fri & actuator/trillium measurement,
• Apollo:  scotty staging, machining TCS camera mount
• Commissioning:  discussions of installation work/noise impact (issues regarding yaw change with ITMx)
• Jamie here for HEPI integration into Guardian

model restarts logged for Sat 10/May/2014
2014_05_10 05:02 h1fw1
2014_05_10 18:42 h1fw0

both unexpected restarts, not simultaneous so no data lost.

No restarts reported.

(Daniel, Alexa)

Over the past few days we have been working on ISCT1 in order to measure the noise produced by the difference in path lengths between the POP beam and the PSL reference beam. See alog 11748 and alog 11737.

To complete the installtion, we aligned the BBPD and borrowed 15V power supply used for REFLAIR B BBPD on the table. We measured the power of the PSL reference beam to be 95mW before the SHG, 90mW after the SHG and dichrioc, and 12mW after the ND06A and 50/50BS. With the BBPD responsivity of 0.1A/W and 2kOhm trans at DC and RF, this amounts to 2.4V at DC. We measured about 2.5V at DC. Meanwhile for the POP beam with PRMI locked, we measured about 50uV (consistent with the 172nW --> 35uV we measured with PRX locked previously). With these values we expected a beatnote signal of about 10uV or -30dBm. Looking at an RF spectrum analyzer at both 9.1Mhz, and 45MHz, we found the beatnote maximum to be about -45dBm; this was consistent enough with our estimate since our alignment on the PD was not very good. 

We borrowed POP_A_RF9 to look at the signal and added an RF amplifier of +30dB, and +30dB whitening gain. It was unclear to us whether we were seeing turn-arounds or fringes. We tried splitting the signal between RF9 and RF45; however, these appeared to be in phase, so this did not help us.  Since we had PRMI locked during this measurement; its likely we lose some of the macroscopic length difference that arises when the cavity is moving freely during ALS. We repeated the above measurement with PRM misaligned and only using the straight shot. I have attached the time series and power spectrum displaying the result. Using the rms of the time series, we calibrated the power spectrum into rad/sqrtz for red. The ALS beam to ISCT1 is green. Since the fringe speed will be twice as fast, we must also shift the frequency to 2f (not shown in DTT image).

In the second plot I have attached, the green trace is the out of loop infrared noise for ALS COMM we have been using ( in particular from alog 11106). Meanwhile, the blue trace is the power spectrum calibrated back into red. From 1 to 10Hz we see that the noise produced from this path difference is very consistent with the 1/f noise we have been hunting. The measurement probably does not hold above ~20Hz.

Switched all Guardian medm calls on the main Guardian screen, the IFO align screen and the ALS screen to a standard medm display call. This fixes the long-standing issue of Guardian not popping up.

For this I made modified copies of two guardian screens:
sys/common/medm/SYS_CUST_GUARD.adl  (a copy of the GUARD.adl screen in the guardian distribution"
sys/common/medm/SYS_CUST_GUARD_OVERVIEW.adl  (a copy of the GUARD_OVERVIEW.adl)

These screens now point directly to the medm screen, instead of calling guardmedm.

I also updated the IFO_ALIGN.adl screen and the ALS_CUST_MAIN.adl screen.

Yesterday night, I tried to run SR2 M2-M2 and M3-M3 (lower stages) in chamber transfer functions after the osems were centered on wednesday. Although both M2 and M3 watchdogs tripped during the measurement, so I am running it again tonight. (This time, I decreased the drive and increased the watchdog threshold).

(David H, Thomas V, Greg G, Alasitair H, Matt H)

Well if yesterday was "The Empire strikes back", today was "Return of the Jedi" and the good guys had a win.

You may remember from this mornings alog that we had been having a few troubles with the alignment of TCSx.

After a brainstorming meeting with Aidan the decision was made to ignore the path defined by the flipper mirrors having problems with (what is supposed to be the central heating path) and align what is the annular heating path (which only uses mirrors) to the output beam splitter and through the irises defining the beam path up the periscope, into the chamber and onto the CP. We will then use the central heating mask instead of the annular heating mask (in the location the annular heating mask would be ), and thus temporarily turn the annular heating beam path into the central heating beam path.

The first step we did was to use a HeNe beam to adjust the output beam splitter and the beamsplitter just before the on table power meter so that the front and back reflections were in the same plane (they werent installed that way). We then went all the way back to the first large gold mirror after the polarisers (which are after the beckhoff controlled HWP) and mirror by mirror in the annular (now temporary central heating) beam path made sure that they were set so that the beam was in a plane with the table at a height of 4 inches.

Once the beam got to the output beamsplittler, the beamsplitter and the last gold mirror before the periscope was used to align the beam to the irises that we had defined to put the beam correctly into the chamber. I roughly made sure that the beam transmitted through the output beam splitter was going to the on table power meter, and the beam path that would go to the FLIR camera was beam blocked as I no longer no that the beam path is correct (I removed the lens there so that needs to be reinstalled).

A HeNe beam was setup to trace through the irises (heading in direction of going towards the periscope). Once the optic beam path had been re-established I swapped out the 1" irises we had (which had clipping on the beam occuring) for 2" irises. We then inserted a 2 inch gold mirror into the path between the 2 irises and sent the HeNe beam down towards HAM5 and the target that we had set up at a distance that mimicks where the CP would be. An "X" was marked on the card and the HeNe aligned to this "X' and the FLIR camera setup so that this spot was centered on the camera.

HeNe beam removed and the CO2 beam projected onto the target. Good to see that the CO2 beam appears to hit exaclty where the HeNe indicated it should (lets out sigh of relief)....so this should mean that the CO2 beam should go into the chamber and onto the CP correctly. Whilst doing the projection we also placed in the central heating mask (it has been rotated 90 degrees so that the rejected beam is directed towards the edge of the table not the center of the table as indicated in the drawing because the beam dump would not fit) and used the projection to help center the mask. Worked well...and success was declared. I dont have the pics of the projection, but pics were taken.

All beams have beam blocked so that if wanted to run the laser around the clock we can (we wont be until given the go ahead by the local LSO). A bugzilla list (Bug 868...https://services.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/integrationissues/show_bug.cgi?id=868) has been made of the tasks that can think of that are still outstanding/need to be done for this table.

One concern: A couple times today we had further issues with the HWP. We would dial up an angle for it to go to, the MEDM screens would indicae that the HWP was at the angle we had requested yet it physically was at a different angle. I have asked Thomas to look into tomorrow as this is a concern.

Pic:

TCScurrentalignmentstanding shows a quick summary of whats aligned and what still needs to be done