since several days, we see that the locking is more and more unstable and the lock duration was sometime less than 20-30 seconds !

1) I tried to optimize the feedback loops

I discovered that the gain on the fast loop on the laser EOM was very low and was almost uneffective for the global stability of the lock (I can remove the cable of the HV to EOM and it does not change the stability of the signals).
when I tried to increase this loop gain in open loop for the PZT loop, I clearly saw an improvement of the transmission signal stored in the cavity.
but when I close the PZT loop, it does not help to get a better locking.
so, at the end, I cancel this loop gain (HV amplifier for the EOM is OFF !) and only the slow feedback loop on the PZT is working.

I reduced the by a factor 2 the range on the PZT loop side to reduce the noise due to the amplified Laselock (voltage divider 1/2 before the HV amp for the PZT).
and I switched off the laser motor controller (Smaract MCS).
after optmization of the PID parameters, I was able to get back the 90kW we had in the past for 33% laser amp ratio and with a very good stability :
the transmission signal is a line and the reflection signal is almost a line too.
in this condition, I seems that I can lock the laser and the FPC indefinitely.

2) issue with Smaract controller

I put back the Smaract controller only for the CEP channel => one can clearly see a bit more noise on the PDH signal but the transmssion and the reflection signal stay almost the same with a very good stability.

then, I put back the Smaract controller for both channels (CEP and laser cavity length) => the lock was very bad, even after a PID optimization despite the fact it was a "Low Vibration" (LV) Smaract MCS controller.

we tried to change the 3-channels LV controller by a standard 3-channels (not LV) spare controller => it was OK for the CEP channel but not good at all the laser cavity length channel => very noisy.
so, we kept this standard controller for the CEP channel and we took 1-channel LV spare controller for the laser cavity length channel => it was ok. no more additionnal noise and we can work without delock in piezo-scan mode.

important parameters :
I used 1ms for hold time in the Smaract controller configuration.
I used 1V/s in piezo scan mode for the speed => it does affect the noise level when the piezo is moved !

3) IP Smaract controller parameters :

I used the MCSNetworkInterfaceConfig.exe software to configure both IP addresses of the 2 controllers.
it's easy, one just has to choose the options.

the IP address for controller ruling the laser cavity length is : 192.168.1.200:5000
the IP address for controller ruling the CEP is : 192.168.1.201:5000

4) final long run test

We did a 1/2h run test to check how many lock loss one gets... see the picture.
we had some few lock losses (with the RF feedback lock ON too) but most of the time, the RF phase was not lost and the X-rays should be continued to be produced.
a test should be done tomorrow.