Reports until 17:00, Tuesday 09 December 2025
H1 SUS
oli.patane@LIGO.ORG - posted 17:00, Tuesday 09 December 2025 (88445)
Estimators seemingly caused 0.6 Hz oscillations again

Jeff, Oli

Earlier, while trying to relock, we were seeing locklosses preceded by a 0.6 Hz oscillation seen in the PRG. Back in October we had a time where the estimator filters were installed incorrectly and caused a 0.6 Hz lock-stopping oscillation (87689). Even though we haven't made any changes to the estimators in over a month now, I decided to try turning them all off (PR3 L/P/Y, SR3 L/P/Y). During the next lock attempt, there were no 0.6 Hz oscillations seen. I checked the filters and settings and everything looks normal, so I'm not sure why this was happening.

I took spectra of the H1:SUS-{PR3,SR3}_M1_ADD_{L,P,Y}_TOTAL_MON_DQ channels for each suspension and each DOF during two similar times before and after the power outage. I wanted the After time to be while we were in MICROSEISM, since it maybe seems like maybe the ifo isn't liking the normal WINDY SEI_ENV right now, so I wanted both the Before and After times to be in a SEI_ENV of MICROSEISM and the same ISC_LOCK states. I chose the After time to be 2025/12/09 18:54:30 UTC, when we were in an initial alignment, and then found a Before time of 2025/11/22 23:07:21 UTC.

Here are the sprectra for PR3 and SR3 for those times. PR3 looks fine for all DOF, and SR3 P looks to be a bit elevated between 0.6 - 0.75 Hz, but it doesn't look like it should be enough of a difference to cause oscillations.

Then, while talking to Jeff, we discovered the difference in overall noise in the total damping for L and P changed depending on the seismic state we were in, so I made a comparison between MICROSEISM and CALM SEI_ENV states (PR3, SR3). USEISM time was 2025/12/09 12:45:26 UTC and CALM was 2025/12/09 08:54:08 UTC with a BW of 0.02. The only difference in the total drive is seen in L and P, where it's higher below 0.6 Hz when we are in CALM.

So during those 0.6 Hz locklosses earlier today, we were in USEISM. Is it possible that the combination of the estimators in the USEISM state create an unstable combination?

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