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Entry   !!! strange FP cavity behavior => impossible to lock !!!, posted by Ronic Chiche at ThomX igloo about mechanics | lasers and optics | detectors and electronics 20230915_172239.jpg
    Reply   !!! strange FP cavity behavior => impossible to lock !!!, posted by Ronic Chiche at ThomX igloo about mechanics | lasers and optics | detectors and electronics 
       Reply   !!! strange FP cavity behavior => impossible to lock !!!, posted by Ronic Chiche at ThomX igloo about mechanics | lasers and optics | detectors and electronics 
          Reply   !!! strange FP cavity behavior => impossible to lock !!!, posted by Ronic Chiche at ThomX igloo about mechanics | lasers and optics | detectors and electronics 20230920_131634.jpg20230920_131559.jpg
             Reply   !!! strange FP cavity behavior => impossible to lock !!!, posted by Ronic Chiche at ThomX igloo about mechanics | lasers and optics | detectors and electronics 
Message ID: 263     Entry time: Mon Sep 18 12:48:39 2023     In reply to: 261     Reply to this: 264
 Author: Ronic Chiche 
 Status: Fixed 
 Type: issue 
 Category: mechanics | lasers and optics | detectors and electronics 
 Location: ThomX igloo 
 Title: !!! strange FP cavity behavior => impossible to lock !!! 

this morning, we tried:

- to move a bit the arm of the L-shape off the beam axis (in case of it could have touch something and induce vibrations) => no effect

- to change the CEP to get an equivalent lower Finesse => weak improvement

- to add a diffuser in front of the PDH photodiode and check the saturation level after the FEMTO amplifier to avoid non linearity effects in the PDH signal => weak improvement

- to move the half and quarter waveplates in the incoming beam path => no effect

then, we have to work with the laser intracavity EOM to try to cancel high frequencies noise

Ronic Chiche wrote:

suddenly, BEFORE switching the HV amplifier ON and BEFORE connecting it to the EOM (in order to explore the HV effect on the EOM for the fast feedback loop),
we lost the lock between the laser and the FP-cavity: in attchement a plot a the lock with the "best" PID parameters.
- yellow: FP-cavity transmission signal
- green: PZT signal
- pink: PDH error signal

the lock was pretty "normal" except that we observed that the intra-cavity power is always slowly increasing from 40kW to ~44kW during a lock, all along this last week.
there are several possiblities for that :
- a slow increasing of the input power (we see the effect on the reflected signal when the FP-cavity is not locked)
- fluctuations of the CEP to the "good" value,
- or more supprisingly an improvement of the Finesse.

after this issue, we tried to change the laser input power (30% to 25%), or the change the CEP => we always get the same result => the lock is either too "weak" (not enough gain) or too "strong" (the system is unstable and goes in oscillations visible on the picture a the end of each lock period).
we tried to change the PID parameters quite a lot to try to compensate a change in the FP-cavity transfer function without any effect => impossible to have a proper lock as before.
we tried to check if the PDH phase, to produce a proper error signal, has changed => no, it was the good one.
we tried to correct the laser alignement to the FP-cavity, but it was more or less correct and we didn't see any change in the locking.

then, one possibility could be that one dust have been suddenly removed from the cavity mirrors by the high power and the Finesse suddenly increased substancially.
=> more Finesse => less bandwidth => high frequency noise are less "visible" in the error signal and we get less bandwith for the feedback => more difficult to lock.
we thought that this kind of problem could be solved by changing the CEP, but in this case, it didn't succeded to lock.

the other possibility is that just before having this issue, we were doing tests on the EOM with a 0-10V signal.
=> could it be possible that the static polarisation of the laser has changed ?
then, we would need to adjust the waveplates in the laser path to adjust the correct polarisation ?
=> not for sure... as the maximum transmitted power at the begining of the lock is the same as before... and compatible with ~ 43 - 44kW in the FP-cavity.

could it be also that the intermediate signals of the PDH scheme are saturated (because of the increasing power : 40kW to 44kW) and produce a "false" error signal leading to instability ?

or could it be a bug in the Laselock ?
=> we could restart it to confirm....

 

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