Today I was able to drive a line on SRM pitch and yaw, aka SRC1 P and Y, in an attempt to understand how the SRM alignment signal appears in various sensors. Our current configuration has SRM alignment controlled via the AS RF72 signal, which is the beat of the 118 MHz and the 45 MHz.
To do this measurement, I engaged the usual 8.125 Hz notches in the ASC loops, and drove at 8.125 Hz at the SRC1 SM exc point. I measured the signals in the I and Q phase on AS RF72, AS RF45, AS RF36 and POP X RF, which is a 45 MHz demod.
First, it is very hard to drive a large enough signal to even see the line in AS RF72 compared to other sensors. We are currently operating with 1 stage of whitening on RF72, for reference. The attachment shows how the signals appeared in the AS WFS as well as the POP WFS for pitch and yaw.
Once I took this measurement, I looked at the time series of the signals. POPX 45 Q pitch has an offset that corresponds to 1.5 urad of SRM pitch offset. I calculated this calibration factor from my injection: 7.37e-5 SRM pitch urad/POPX pit ct. The POPX Q yaw signal also had an offset, but it was much smaller, only 0.24 urad, calibration factor 3.25e-4 SRM yaw urad/ POPX yaw ct
On June 5, the SQZ team adjusted the SRCL digital offset, and when the SRCL digital offset was zero, the POPX Q offsets corresponded to about 0.09 urad of SRM pitch offset and 0.05 urad of SRM yaw offset (sqz alog).
In the past, we have operated with some SRC1 offset, however, that offset is remarkably small compared to even the dark offsets we have applied to the AS RF72 channels. SRC1 p offset was set to -0.042, SRC1 Y to 0.098, while the four segment dark offsets on RF72 Q are -17.8, 0.2, 2.2, 12.9 (medm screenshot).
Overall, I think we should consider a few things:
- do we need more whitening on AS RF72?
- should we commission POPX 45 Q as the SRC1 sensor instead?
- should we adjust the alignment offsets of SRC1 to offload some of the SRCL offset?
Sheila has suggested we open the SRC1 loop and try stepping the offset while monitoring the buildups, the effect of the SRCL offset on SQZ, and the overall offsets in AS RF72 and POPX Q.
Whatever effect alignment offsets in the SRC are having on the SRCL detuning seems to be much smaller in yaw than in pitch.
To calibrate the AS RF72 signals into SRM angle, we can use these factors:
0.274 SRM pit urad/ AS RF72 pit ct
0.173 SRM yaw urad/ AS RF72 yaw ct
Today, Sheila and I followed up on this, and the results are a bit confusing, but somewhat promising.
To start, Sheila reran the "brontosaurus plot" measurement, where FIS is injected to help determine the SRCL offset. She reports this work here.
While she changed the SRCL offset, I once again monitored the AS RF72 and POP X signals. As Sheila changed the SRCL offset, the offset in POPX did change the same way as I saw yesterday, which is not that surprising.
Then, when Sheila set the SRCL offset to zero, I tried opening the SRC1 loop and moving SRM around. The first thing I noticed is that the calibration I calculated yesterday seems bad, since I was adjusting the SRM yaw by 11 urad (according to the slider calibration), but the change in the POP X yaw offset corresponded to less than 1 urad (according to my measured calibration from yesterday).
I moved yaw in only one direction, with the goal of seeing if I could reduce the POP X yaw offset. However, I gave up after 11 urad because it didn't seem to be doing much at all except to small effect on POP X yaw.
Next, I tried moving SRM in pitch. I went the positive direction, and Sheila and I immediately saw the buildups get worse, so then I went the other way and the buildups got better! This corresponded to a 20 urad change in SRM pitch, according to the alignment slider. The change in the POP X pitch offset was minimal.
We also saw kappa C increase quite a bit, almost too good to be true, so we didn't trust the value since we had a large SRCL detuning at the time. Sheila did see that the change in the SRM pitch had an effect on the squeezing as well.
However, Sheila then determined a better SRCL offset of -382, so we went there, and the kappa C leveled off to 1.02, which was better than our current nominal value of 1. This seemed to hold. Then, I stepped the SRM pitch offset back to the starting alignment and the buildups decreased and kappa C went back to 1.
Following the buildups, there seems to be a better alignment of the SRM in pitch. At this time it seems like yaw has no effect, but I only moved in one direction. I think that, whatever the SRCL offset is, we should move the SRM around in pitch and yaw and see if there is an improvement to be found in the buildups. My current hypothesis is that the RF72 dark offsets are creating some alignment offset in the SRC. After we find a good SRM alignment position, we can recheck the SRCL offset, hopefully with both a squeezing measurement and a sensing function.
We should also probably check the whitening on RF72, maybe next Tuesday.
These results are making me think that probably POP X Q would not make a good signal for SRC alignment, since it is dominated by the SRCL offset.
The first ndscope attached are showing the behavior of the POP X and RF72 signals while changing SRM alignment. The second shows the buildups and kappa C when changing SRM pitch and SRCL offset from 0 to -382.
