ibrahim.abouelfettouh@LIGO.ORG - posted 09:49, Monday 20 October 2025 (87578)
Lockloss 16:35
Lockloss after 16 hrs locked. Looks to be microseism caused.
Lockloss after 16 hrs locked. Looks to be microseism caused.
TITLE: 10/20 Day Shift: 1430-2330 UTC (0730-1630 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Observing at 150Mpc
OUTGOING OPERATOR: Tony
CURRENT ENVIRONMENT:
SEI_ENV state: USEISM
Wind: 4mph Gusts, 3mph 3min avg
Primary useism: 0.04 μm/s
Secondary useism: 0.45 μm/s
QUICK SUMMARY:
IFO is in NLN and OBSERVING as of 00:58 UTC (14 hours)
After wind finally calmed down last night, IFO was able to lock and is still locked!
Plan for today is commissioning from 8:30 to 11:30 AM PT.
TITLE: 10/20 Eve Shift: 2330-0500 UTC (1630-2200 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Observing at 152Mpc
INCOMING OPERATOR: Tony
SHIFT SUMMARY: After H1 relocked at the start of my shift, I dealt with a brief ASC issue, then started observing. Been a quiet evening otherwise and the range has steadily been coming up over the past few hours. H1 has now been locked for 4.5 hours.
LOG:
H1 is back to observing as of 00:58 UTC after a long day of tussling with the environment, which still isn't great, but the wind has calmed down a bit.
After assisting DRMI locking by adjusting PRM, locking went automatically. Once we reached NLN, I noticed the 1 Hz ASC ringup starting. The most significant culprits I saw were CSOFT_P and INP1_P, so I adjusted their gains from 25 to 30 and -1 to -2, respectively. This seemed to stave off the rising ringup, and after about 15 minutes, I noted these loops and the PRG finally start to calm down. I returned the loop gains to their nominal and started observing. I can't say for sure if this works as a long-term fix for this ringup, but at least we didn't lose lock this time. I still see DHARD_P oscillating slightly at 1 Hz 10 minutes later, but it seems small at this point.
TITLE: 10/19 Day Shift: 1430-2330 UTC (0730-1630 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Wind
INCOMING OPERATOR: Ryan S
SHIFT SUMMARY:
IFO is LOCKING at ACQUIRE_DRMI_1F
Bad day for the IFO due to the environment.
To start, the wind has not gone under 30Mph for the entire day, and has been over 35mph for the majority. It looks to be dying down now and will continue to do so this evening. Midshift report (alog 87565)
The microseism was sitting just at the 90th percentile point until 3 hrs ago when it started increasing.
We did get to NLN once but due to the known 1Hz CSOFT_P ringup (which previously was managed by increasing gain) but 4 minutes later, we had a Lockloss. (Lockloss alog 87571) This is an ongoing issue where it appears that long lock acquisitions experience the 1Hz ringup more violently than short acquisitions. Due to the microseism and wind, this has been the case for many of the recent locks. Ryan S has an alog about this correlation with a hunch that it is related to IFO thermalization (alog 87557)
In the next lock, since this is bound to happen again, we can either sit at MAX_POWER or increase the gain further (from 25 to 30) and see if either works. The former would test out the hypothesis in Ryan S's alog and the latter would just up the fix from before.
14:30 UTC - shift start
14:54 UTC - TRANSITION_FROM_ETMX Lockloss
16:42 UTC - Initial Alignment - Fully Auto
17:12 UTC - IFO in IDLE due to WIND
18:36 - Lock Acquisition Attempt
19:35 - Succesful Lock Start
20:24 - NLN Reached (under 1 hr, fully auto)
20:28 - Lockloss due to 1Hz Ringup
22:07 UTC - IFO in IDLE due to MICROSEISM
22:54 UTC - Lock Acquisition Attempt
23:30 UTC - in DRMI, end of shift
LOG:
None
TITLE: 10/19 Eve Shift: 2330-0500 UTC (1630-2200 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Wind
OUTGOING OPERATOR: Ibrahim
CURRENT ENVIRONMENT:
SEI_ENV state: USEISM
Wind: 27mph Gusts, 16mph 3min avg
Primary useism: 0.06 μm/s
Secondary useism: 0.52 μm/s
QUICK SUMMARY: H1 has been down most of the day due to high winds and microseism. I think the forecast says it'll calm down a bit this evening, but that remains to be seen. I'll have H1 keep trying for a bit, but may move it back to IDLE if unsuccessful.
Lockloss due to 1Hz Ringup.
Closes FAMIS 27399. Last checked in alog 87406
Laser Status:
NPRO output power is 1.856W
AMP1 output power is 70.51W
AMP2 output power is 139.5W
NPRO watchdog is GREEN
AMP1 watchdog is GREEN
AMP2 watchdog is GREEN
PDWD watchdog is GREEN
PMC:
It has been locked 26 days, 4 hr 48 minutes
Reflected power = 24.74W
Transmitted power = 106.7W
PowerSum = 131.4W
FSS:
It has been locked for 0 days 0 hr and 55 min
TPD[V] = 0.5245V
ISS:
The diffracted power is around 3.4%
Last saturation event was 0 days 1 hours and 5 minutes ago
Possible Issues:
PMC reflected power is high
Wind is still high. Microseism is rising now.
Managed a 2-minute DRMI lock and that's the highest we've gotten today. If we continue failing and the wind/microseism stays high, I will go into IDLE again until I see any improvements.
Sun Oct 19 10:08:45 2025 INFO: Fill completed in 8min 41secs
TITLE: 10/19 Day Shift: 1430-2330 UTC (0730-1630 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Lock Acquisition
OUTGOING OPERATOR: Tony
CURRENT ENVIRONMENT:
SEI_ENV state: CALM
Wind: 31mph Gusts, 16mph 3min avg
Primary useism: 0.05 μm/s
Secondary useism: 0.37 μm/s
QUICK SUMMARY:
IFO is LOCKING at ENGAGE_SOFT_LOOPS
IFO was in the middle of an automatic relock when I arrived. Wind was very high last night but looks to be coming down.
Should be able to go into OBSERVING soon.
Wind did not end up going down - we lost lock at TRANISTION_ETMX and now are unable to lock ALS (it locks for a few minutes before losing lock). I think it's a combination of 90th% microseism and 35+mph gusts. According to forecasts, thewind will only begin dying down at ~2PM.
Had a lull in wind, managed to do a fully auto initial alignment - then wind went back up over 35mph and continued losing lock. After over 15 pre-DRMI locklosses where alignment itself looks great, I've put H1 in IDLE for 30 minutes as wind comes down (though it's currently trending up).
TITLE: 10/19 Eve Shift: 2330-0500 UTC (1630-2200 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Observing at 152Mpc
INCOMING OPERATOR: Tony
SHIFT SUMMARY: Overall a fairly quiet shift. After an unknown lockloss earlier this evening, I ran H1 through an alignment and it was able to relock fully on its own. H1 has been locked since, now for 3.5 hours.
LOG:
Lockloss @ 00:06 UTC after almost 9 hours locked - link to lockloss tool
No obvious cause.
Back to observing at 01:37 UTC. Ran an alignment, then locking went fully automatically.
No sign of the CSOFT_P ringup after reaching NLN. Also the range is better this lock at around 160Mpc.
Got called at 3:30AM due to DRMI lock unable to lock. Flashes seem bad since the earthquake and there hasn't been an initial alignment for some reason. Set IFO to initially align then turned the manager back on.
Looking further into this, it did run initial alignment before it called Ibrahim, but there were two DRMI lock losses and one regular lock loss before it called. Looks like there was a large nearby earthquake that caused the lock loss and also perhaps didn't help the initial alignment, causing Ibrahim to have to run a second one. I'll need to look further into that.
Tuesday Aug 19th I moved the dust monitor #10 from the bier garten area to up on the work platform on BSC2 (alog86444). Attached are some various plots of DM10 and DM6, the monitor next to HAM6 in the mega clean room (turned off atm).
Attached a zoomed-in plot of the DM10 channels just around the maintenance period on Tuesday, Aug 26th while craning was happening overhead. Dust counts certainly spiked mid-morning, which is likely when craning was happening as seen by ITMY STS BLRMs.
Just reached NLN - but worried that we will lose lock in the next 9 minutes due to the 1Hz ringup.
If Ryan S is correct about the lock acquisition time/thermalizing correlation with the lockloss-causing ringups, this lock definitely falls into the category for LL - we shall see. alog 87557
Yep - Lockloss after 4 minutes due to the ringup.
Still unable to get past DRMI despite good looking alignment. Made the decision to sit in IDLE. Wind is high but is lowered to around 30+ gusts though microseism is now over the 90th percentile and rising.
Wind is forecasted to come down this evening.