I copy the post about Fast Feedback loop : https://elog.lal.in2p3.fr/FPC/THOMX+commissioning/265

This morning,

- I installed the fast feedback loop.
now, the error signal goes to the Laselock AND
to a FEMTO DHPVA amplifier which is connected to the Leysop M250 HV amplifier connected through its HV+ output to the EOM.
one can set the gain of this loop thanks to the DHPVA gain potentiometer and to a 30dB attenuator.
it allows to have a fast and stable lock ONLY IF one reduce the FP-cavity gain using the CEP.
I will check later if I'm able to lock at the maximum gain but today, the cavity power is ~ 30kW, to be compared to the 45kW we were able to get before the "mirror cleaning event".

- I had to swap the sampling frequency of the Laselock from 250kHz to 2.5MHz to reduce the latency and improve the Slow feedback loop stability.
with the previous sampling frequency, the fast feedback loop was almost uneffective...

Conclusion : now, this Fast feedback loop is mandatory to lock the cavity at high Finesse or high Gain (G > 10k)

from several weeks, the maximum power stored in the FP-cavity was ~ 5kW.

today with Daniele, we finished to investigate the problem, and now the power inside the FP-cavity is back to ~50kW for 30% of laser amplifier ratio (~16W).

we optimized the signal received by the PDH photodiode by installing a large DET100 to collect more light.

if one installs a small photodiode (DET10) in the middle of the beam, the carrier signal when a FP-cavity crosses a resonance is larger because the photodiode "sees" only the part of the beam which is geometrically coupled to the cavity in its small active area, but :
1- once we will improve the geometrical coupling, the part of the incoming beam coupled to the FP-cavity will increase.
2- one need to work with a diffuser in front of this photodiode to precisely adapt the feedback loops gain : in that case the photodiode is sensitive to the whole input beam, whatever his active area size.
so, we decide to put a DET100 (which is given for 35ns rise time / 10MHz BW when connected on 50ohms).

see the scheme in attached file.
and a picture of the desktop with all the lock parameters :

the quality of the lock, seen on the reflected power signal is very good !
and the stability is only limited by the necessity to act on the laser Smaract motors to let the PZT in its working range.
dark blue : transmitted signal
green : PZT
pink : error signal
light blue : reflected signal

conclusion : it is not clear that the cavity Finesse have significantly increased during the last weeks, as we are roughly at the same level than before (47kW).
but as we precisely adapted the signal levels in the feedback scheme (PDH S/N ratio and Laselock parameters), the result is a more stable lock.
 

this morning, with Vincent Chaumat, we made a beating (phase detection) between the laser 33MHz and the 33MHz coming from the Rigol generator locked by the 10MHz link onto the 500MHz ring generator.

once the laser and the FP-cavity are locked on the RF reference, the 33MHz phase detection is stabilized and confirm the laser/FP-cavity lock on the RF reference.

we plan to make a drift measurement and a jitter measurement to estimate this lock quality.
the 33MHz frequency being quite small, the quality of this estimation will be poor but it can give a "worse case" estimation.

 today, I locked the laser on the FP-cavity and the FP-cavity on the RF reference with 47kW inside the FP-cavity.

equivalent jitter :

when lock is OFF : sine signal V=V0*sin(phi(t)) with V0=300mV => Vrms = 300/sqrt(2)) = 210mV rms

when lock is ON : noise 10mV < dV < 20mV 
for low phase values : dV=V0*dphi

when the RF locking is done, this voltage is about dV = 20mV rms => dphi = dV/V0 = 67 mrad
dphi = 2*pi*f0*dt => jitter dt = dphi/(2*pi*f0) = dV * T0/(2*pi*V0)

T0/(2*pi*V0) ~ 1ps/mV => jitter ~ 10-20 ps rms

previous measurements were exhibiting a jitter lower than 5ps rms : https://elog.lal.in2p3.fr/FPC/THOMX+commissioning/299

This morning with Daniele, we operated the FP-cavity to be sure there is no issue due to the Linac section changing operation :
- opening/closing the valves due to air pressure break down
- opening/closing the bunker roof
- large temperature change
- etc...

the temperature in the bunker dropped to 18°C instead of 21.5°C, so we had to do some FP-cavity alignment.
but after obtaining resonances and changing the CEP, we got more than 50kW for 33% of amplifier ratio => OK !

This morning, I locked again the FP-cavity at more than 50kW with 33% of laser amplifier ratio.

the temperature is measured today at 20.5°C despite the fact the air conditionning is still OFF.
the temperature, rising from 18°C, started monday at 11AM roughly.
maybe, the difference comes from the external doors of the Igloo which have been closed recently ? to be confirmed.
as the temperature is measured inside the airflow housing, all the powered equipements are disspating some heat, rising the inside temperature compared to the bunker temperature.
EDIT : Sophie Chance told me the water temperature cooling of ThomX was defective... the water temperature went to 29°C ! it is being fixed by Dalkia.
careful, we don't have a temperature measurement of the water going to the chiller...

to find resonances, I moved the OC/OP/OCH.01-MOT06 motor from position -770 000 steps to position -788 600 steps which corresponds to ~100µm !
it can be explained by the temperature change and also because during the lock last week, I let the MOT06 motor in position after the cavity was at 50kW.
I had also to change the CEP motor position from -170µm to -420µm and to do some alignment (with walking procedure).

accessing the motor OC/OP/OCH.01-MOT03 from the ATK panel, produces an error : "connection to device failed"... to be solved by Kevin ?

from now on, the transmission factor for calculating the FP intra cavity power is 1/1.75ppm ~ 570 000 (changed in the Powermeter software)

this morning the temperature of the water cooling circuit is still very high said Sophie, and the laser amplifier temperature "Temp Amp1" is at 29°C instead of ~23-25°C
then, when I start the laser amplifier, it stops rapidly with a warning error.
I will check the chiller status as the Dalkia should fix the water temperature problem at some time (Sophie + Alice working on this point)

the air temperature in the bunker is back at 19.5°C from last Friday afternoon and is stable at less than 0.5°C.

after restarting the chiller, the "Temp Amp1" is now at 25°C before starting the power in the amplifier, it rises at 28.5°C after some minutes
I found the resonances with the motor OC/OP/OCH.01-MOT06 at position -783 460 steps.
and I had to tune the CEP to get the maximum resonances at -198µm.

with the new transmission factor, I got almost 90kW for 33% laser amplifier ratio after a simple alignment procedure.

the motor OC/OP/OCH.01-MOT03 is sill in error.

this morning, I had to restart the chiller. Temp Amp 1 is at 27.5°C after having started the amplifier at 33% ratio.

I removed the 100kohms resistor on the Transmission channel, on the scope (now, it is 1Mohms), to get more sensitivity.

the air temperature is around 21°C and is stable during the last days.

I don't see any power coming from the amplifier despite it is at 33%... I think the MPS prevent us to work and the amplifier shutter is blocking the beam.
I will send an email to Sophie to check that point.

EDIT : Kevin showed me how to acknowledge the error on the MPS
=> go to "Detail" and then acknowledge the "vacuum error".

I saw the FP-cavity resonances but I didn't have time to optimize them as the water temperature is still too high and the chiller is not working good enough.
=> the amplifier did a safety stop.
one needs to wait this issue is fixed.

OC/OP/OCH.01-MOT06 at position -790 000 steps.
CEP motor = -300µm but far from the optimum CEP position.

this morning, the computer was restarted and I had to launch all the applications.
no problem except the powermeter for which I had to do a power switch OFF and ON remotely.

the chiller was in error and I had to restart it also.

the air temperature seems to be not properly controlled (see the picture)
one can see a constant temperature drop from Tuesday 9 April 10:30am.

it seems the water cooling is also not working properly as I saw the laser amplifier temperature (Temp Amp 1) increased constantly during the run from 24°C to 30°C (in 30 mintues).
=> it's not normal, it should be regulated at 25°C !

I got 89kW in the FP-cavity with 33% of laser amplifier ratio after tuning the CEP and the alignment.

OC/OP/OCH.01-MOT06 roughly at position -782 000 steps.
CEP motor = -425µm

the OC/OP/OCH.01-MOT03 is still faulty => to be fixed by Kevin.

this morning, the chiller was in error and I had to restart it.

the air temperature is around 21°C.

the water cooling has been repaired but the initial Temp Amp 1 is at 28°C.

I got 86kW in the FP-cavity with 33% of laser amplifier ratio after tuning the CEP and the alignment.
but the amplifier stopped after an error after 30 minutes => the Temp Amp1 reached 30°C => it's not normal.
the chiller was again in error. I tried to restart it but I got an ERROR14 : Thermostat error, the flow rate is zero !!!
the tubes for the inner circuit going to the amplifier are a little hot by touching them with my hand.
the tubes for the outer circuit going to the ThomX water circuit is hot for the "blue" tube et cold for the "yellow" tube.
it means there is no flow in the outer circuit.
Jean-Noel just told me it's normal because he stopped the ThomX water pump because of a too high temperature => Dalkia should fix the problem today.

OC/OP/OCH.01-MOT06 roughly at position -792 600 steps.
CEP motor = -211µm

the OC/OP/OCH.01-MOT03 is still faulty => to be fixed by Kevin.

Yesterday, the ThomX water circuit should have been repared,
and yesterday aftenoon, Daniele restarted the chiller and I checked it this morning without any error.
BUT the pump of the ThomX water circuit is again in default...
Dalkia has been called to fix the problem.

despite this point, I restarted the laser amplifier this morning.
everything seems as usual and I can see some small resonance at the output of the Fabry-Perot cavity
BUT the reflection photodiode level doen't change when the amplifier is ON.
I need to check if the photodiode switch is set ON or if it is misaligned or dead.... to be checked.
in between, I prefer to stop the laser amplifier.

edit : the photodiode problem was coming from the PhD power supply which was OFF.
I just turned it ON.

the air temperature is between 21°C and 22°C.

I tried to lock the cavity but it was very instable with only short time locks.
I had to increase the parameters of the PID:
P = 0.07
I = 0.0007
D = 0.706
after that, the lock was stable but we can see something in transmission (dark blue curve) which seems to be a degeneracy.

maybe because of the water cooling temperature, after stopping the laser amplifier, I was not able to restart it.
I always got an error (an alarm was triggered by bad sequence) when I want to switch ON the preamplifier at 0%.
the Temp Amp 1 is about 25-26°C... it is stange.
to be tested after the water cooling is repaired.

today, I tried to restart the amplifier at 0% (without 3rd stage) but it didn't start... still the same error message.

but the PD_IN power and the PD_PULSE frequency seems correct.... I will try to power the amplifier OFF and ON later to see if one can reset this error.

edit : finally, a the end of the day, I switched OFF and ON several times the amplifier but I always get the same error message "bad sequence error".
I tried to use the Alphanov software to see if we can get more information about the error :
the watchdog LED is RED => I have to check if it is normal or not before starting the amplifier
and the PD_CRI LED is RED => normal because the preamp stage is not started (and it does not want to start...)

PD_IN is at 3.1mV but a previous post says that the amplifier worked with 2.7mV.
we can try to increase to 3.2-3.3 mW and see if it works....

edit : it seems we already had this kind of error before.
Guillaume suggested to check the average power of the seeder at the output of the fiber, the repetition rate and the stability of the signal.
previous post (https://elog.lal.in2p3.fr/FPC/THOMX+commissioning/179) have shown an input power (PD_IN) around 5.7mW (see the attached image) !
this power was maybe obtained without any EOM which divide the power by ~2.
=> we can try to remove it temporarilly to check if the amplifier is able to restart in this condition... to be done

today with Daniele, we disconnected the EOM to increase the injected power of the amplifier, we were at 4.8mW but we still have the "bad sequence" error => email to Guillaume
we tried also several time again, to stop and restart the amplifier, but it didn't help.
I connected back the EOM and the power dropped to 2.7mW instead of 3.1mW => fiber injection alignement to be done

the CVBG of the compressor module seems to have an issue.

here is the plan of the work :

1) faire des résonances avec la CFP
2) ajuster les iris d'alignement du faisceau de l'ampli pour être sur de ne pas perdre la référence de l'axe de la CFP

3) installer des wedges haute puissance à proximité du compresseur + beam profiler
4) verifier la forme du faisceau au beam profiler en fonction de la puissance de l'ampli

5) ouvrir le boîtier du compresseur
6) prendre des images du boîtier à la caméra thermique en fonction de la puissance

7) éventuellement shunter le 2e CVBG avec un D shape et regarder le mode et caractéristique en sortie d'ampli.
8) ajuster l'injection dans le premier CVBG ou le second ou les deux en fonctions des résultats précédent

here are some useful logbook posts:

D-shape + images thermiques du compresseur qui peuvent servir de référence :

https://elog.lal.in2p3.fr/FPC/THOMX+commissioning/147

https://elog.lal.in2p3.fr/FPC/THOMX+commissioning/150

post des images du faisceau en fonction de la puissance de l'ampli :

https://elog.lal.in2p3.fr/FPC/THOMX+commissioning/135 (et autres posts du fil)

https://elog.lal.in2p3.fr/FPC/THOMX+commissioning/195 (et autres posts du fil)

1) this morning, I aligned to CFP to get back 82kW in the cavity for 33% of amplifier ratio.
thus, we can ajust the iris positions on the optical table to fix the CFP optical path before touching the CVBG.

2) we aligned the 5 iris. all of them were misaligned by 1-2mm, principaly vertically (maybe because we had to change the CFP frequency some time ago to match the new RF frequency?).

3) we opened the compressor box and found out the beam on the last mirror was really on the border => we have to move it.

=> we recorded several beam profiles at 20-70% of amplifier ratio (see images before realignement)
above 50% of amplifier ratio, the beam is deformed.

=> we realigned the 2 last mirrors of the compressor and compensate the axis displacement with the 2 inches injection mirrors at the output of the compressor to get back the telescope axis.
amplifier ratio (%)                 power after compressor (W)
0                                                 0.286
10                                               0.91
20                                               8.6
30                                              16.7
40                                              25.5
50                                              34.5
60                                              42.5
70                                              50.0
80                                              57.0
90                                              64.0
100                                            70.0

small power drop for ratio < 40% compared to previous measurements : https://elog.lal.in2p3.fr/FPC/THOMX+commissioning/133

the power is back => OK ! :-)))

we took some images with the beam profiler at high power after the realignement (see images after realignement)

tomorrow, we have to realign the amplifier beam axis to the CFP axis.

this morning with Daniele, we realigned the amplifier beam axis on the iris position.
it was pretty fast an easy => we got rapidely some resonance and we locked back to 87kW @33% amp ratio after tuning CEP and alignment.

we tried to play on the L-shape but we didn't a clear effect.

we also played on the 1/2 and 1/4 waveplates to tune the polarization.
we see very clearly the locked reflected signal changing without almost changing the transmission !

Aurélien suggested to slightly focusing the beam in the DET36 photodiode to have a better estimation of the coupling.
presently, the beam is clearly larger than the DET36 photodiode area which artificially increases the measured coupling.
(I cannot use a DET100 because I need 500MHz BW to get some RF signal for beating with the 500MHz reference signal).

I added a +75mm lens in front of the DET36 reflection signal photodiode => now, the beam is rougly 1-2mm diameter, centered on the DET36.
when I optimize the alignment and the CEP, I get 86-87kW in the CFP and 45% coupling => cf plot

end of the CVBG issue posts.

this morning, with Daniele, we checked the amplifier power, right after the CVBG (the power meter has to be placed on a metal plate above the large table hole), and just at the input of the FP cavity, after the 1/4 and 1/2 waveplates (the power meter has to be placed on flat beam dump+ Thorlabs beam dump + V metallic mount to be at the right height).

we compared with the power measured the 9th of september : https://elog.lal.in2p3.fr/FPC/THOMX+commissioning/356

the 3 collumns are the measurement close to the CVBG on 9th of september / same position today / just befor the FPC today

amplifier ratio (%)                 power after compressor (W)                 (new) power @ CVBG   (new) power @ FPC      ratio FPC/CVBG power (%)
10                                               0.91                                                  0.93                                    0.83                                       89.2
20                                               8.6                                                    8.6                                      8.0                                         93.0
30                                              16.7                                                  16.9                                    15.8                                        93.5
40                                              25.5                                                  25.6                                    24.0                                        93.7
50                                              34.5                                                  34.6                                    32.5                                        93.9
60                                              42.5                                                  42.5                                    39.5                                        92.9
70                                              50.0                                                  50.0                                    45.0                                        90.0

we observed with the viewer the beam on the powermeter.
at 70% of amplifier ratio, the beam size is as big as the powermeter detector.
then, the 93% to 90% transport efficiency drop could come from this "too small" powermeter detector.

we observed also at this power ratio (70%) that the 1/4 and 1/2 waveplates were not perfectly centered and we burn a part of the platic mount at this power.

we did a long term run (25 mn) with the powermeter located at the FPC position at 33% amplifier ratio.

the initial power was 18W .
then, it goes to 18.5W in 10 minutes, then 5 minutes later, it goes to 18.3W and stay stable until  the end the run.

I put back and aligned the 1/2 waveplate only and I get 71kW max after its optimization and optimizing the CEP and alignment (without walking procedure).
this waveplate change a lot the reflected power seen on the CH2 of the scope.

to be continued this afternoon...