J. Kissel, M. Todd, S. Dwyer
Just recording this for posterity in case: Matt and I wanted to (continue) parallelizing our work on characterizing the ISS Array at full / nominal power (60W into the PSL) and characterizing RPM dynamics for future HSTS Estimator modeling, respectively. The estimator team discovered a week or two ago that PRM has a different dynamical response when the SUS is ALIGNED vs. MISALIGNED. So, I misaligned IM4 and PR2 to ensure the 60W didn't go anywhere but a fixed location, and aligned PRM.
The worry is that IM4 doesn't have a "safe" designated fixed location to dump its reflected beam when misaligned -- there's no "parking dump" like there is for PRM. So -- this an aLOG to indicate the times of high power with IM4 misaligned and what little info we have about the physical position.
I say "what little information about the position we have" because IM4, which is a HAUX suspension -- while IM4 has recently had its OSEM sensor PD sat amp upgraded, we have not measured or installed an absolute calibration for the sensors with an ISI injection. We know from other suspensions, that OSEM PDs can have factors of 2x to 3x errors between the "generic calibration based on electronics and [likely ancient] open light current measurement" and the modern absolute calibration from the ISI GS13s.
There *is* a calibration of the IM4 alignment sliders -- installed in Apr 2024 (LHO:77211).
However, that calibration was based on the OSEM sensor PDs.
So we have to take the fidelity of this calibration with a huge grain of salt a la the above distrust in OSEM PD calibration.
So -- IM4 had the following alignment offsets requested of its sliders:
OFFSET OUT16
["urad"] [EB-DAC ct]
P +114.539 +1248.53
Y +111.103 +625.387
and its *misalignment* offsets -- which are not calibrated in the front-end, but I've calibrated them using the (P,Y) = (10.9005 , 5.6289) [EB-DAC ct / "urad"] calibration from LHO:77211 here:
OFFSET OUT16
["urad"] [EB-DAC ct]
P +50.915 +555.0
Y +98.598 +555.0
So, misaligned, that give a total requested displacement of
OFFSET OUT16
["urad"] [EB-DAC ct]
P 165.454 1803.532
Y 209.701 1180.388
IM4 was misaligned, with PRM aligned and PR2 misaligned, and 60W into the IMC from 2025-10-28 16:08 UTC to 2025-10-28 17:06 UTC.
After 17:06 UTC, the IMC power remained at 60W, but I aligned IM4 and PR2 and misaligned PRM. (The normal "IFO DOWN" configuration).
(So yes, we didn't turn the IMC power down before we went from misaligned to aligned, either.)