Reports of 63904
AdV-DET (Commissioning)
boldrini, bersanetti, gouaty - 20:40 Tuesday 06 October 2026 (69867) Print this report
OMC alignment in DC readout

While the ITF was locked in DC readout this afternoon, we enabled the computation of the B1 DARM dither signal and engaged the B1 DARM beam drift control of SDB1 (Fig.1). This has the effect of increasing the optical gain by almost a factor 2, while the bench alignment changed by almost 10 urad in TX and by 1 or 2 urad in TY.

Accordingly after the unlock, the B5 QD2 offsets were updated (H=+40 and V=+200).

Images attached to this report
AdV-ISC (Commissioning up to first full interferometer lock)
boldrini, bossilkov, bersanetti, gouaty, was - 20:40 Tuesday 06 October 2026 (69866) Print this report
DC_READOUT recovery and B1s hand-off

We recovered the DC_READOUT state, after a few hiccups. We realized that the unlocks when attempting the hand-off to B1_DC were due to a "slow" oscillation on DARM that, when compounded with the high 491 Hz line, would trip the threshold of the fast shutter.

To cope with this, we restored the change of DARM_GAIN in the LOCKING_OMC_DARM_B1_PD3 state (line 5199) and prepared a gian in the ini file that was a bit higher than the one set up by the servo before this step. This allowed to acquire the DC_READOUT state, but the DARM servo further increased the gain substantially. We set a gain close to this final number in the ini file and tested the lock acquisition, successfully.

Before proceeding with the B1s hand-off, we allowed Gouaty to re-enable SDB1 drift control, which increased DARM OG substantially (Fig.1). DARM servo adjusted the gain of the loop to 0.074 after this change, therefore we corrected the corresponding parameter in the .ini file to a value closer to this (0.064), to leave some margin for further evolution during this state.

After that Gouaty opened the shutters for B1s_QDs and we measured the transfer function at low frequency between B1p and B1s and tested the hand-off with these commands:

  • ASC.BS_TY_INPUT.AcMatrixChSet(5.0, 0.0, "B1p_QD1_50MHz_H_I", -0.065, "B1s_QD1_50MHz_H_I")
  • ASC.BS_TX_INPUT.AcMatrixChSet(5.0, 0.0, "B1p_QD1_50MHz_V_I", 0.31, "B1s_QD1_50MHz_V_I")

The hand-off worked without issue, although the BS alignment is still on drift control so this test is not indicative of the final performance of the loop wih this new error signal.

The lock was disrupted by an earthquake, after the shock passed we attempted another lock acquisition, succesfully, but the ITF unlocked again while attempting to engage LN2.

The recovery of this state is postponed to tomorrow.

We leave the ITF with the arms locked.

Images attached to this report
AdV-DET (Commissioning)
gouaty, berni, bersanetti - 18:42 Tuesday 06 October 2026 (69863) Print this report
OMC slow shutter now being used in MOVELIMIT mode

This morning we performed some tests of the OMC slow shutter in order to investigate the issue faced yesterday afternoon.

Francesco put the ITF in single bounce mode. We put DET_MAIN in pause and tried to act on the OMC shutter from the SDB1_Rot process using the MOVELIMIT command. The first attempts of opening the shutter in this way failed. We also tried to close the shutter (in case the sign in the command was wrong), but this did not open the shutter neither.

Then we opened the shutter using the relative movement of 45000 steps. After this was done, we clicked on "Stop movement". After this, we tried to close the shutter using again the MOVELIMIT command, and this time it worked. We then performed a few cycles of opening/closing the shutter with MOVELIMIT which all worked fine.

We updated the DET_MAIN.py file in order to use the MOVELIMIT command instead of the relative motion. We put DET_MAIN back in exec and reloaded the node. We tested a couple of cycles of opening/closing using DET_MAIN and it worked fine.

We also updated the opening and closing durations set in the DET_MAIN.ini file, as the motion with the MOVELIMIT command is faster. Looking at an example of opening sequence (Fig.1) we can see that the opening takes between 25 and 30s. Therefore we set the opening duration to 45 s (we leave at least 15s of margin). For the closing (Fig.2), the duration is about 35 s. We set the closing time to 60s.

For the record previous values for the opening and closing durations were 80 and 100 s respectively.

These durations could be optimized further when we have more statistics.

Images attached to this report
Injection system (General activities)
gosselin, lagabbe, spinicelli, cantini, galoppini - 15:42 Tuesday 06 October 2026 (69865) Print this report
Main chiller - oscillations and water refill

This morning we received an alarm because the water level of the main chiller was low. By better looking at the signal we realized that since the 30/09, the water level started to oscillates with a period of about 1 minute (figure 1)
We went in chiller to refill it and see if it has some effects. It did not. (figure 2)
This oscillation can not be seen in the main INJ PSL signals. (figure 3)
The flow sensor that senses the water going out of the chiller do not see that oscillation, the temperature sensor instead sees it (figure 4). And what we see is that when the level is increasing, the temperature of the water in the tank is decreasing. This may indicates that the flow between the cooling system and the tank is oscillating.... But, the oscillation on the temperature sensor was already present before the level sensor started to oscillates... (figure 5) This is not clear, we will monitor the situation in the coming days. 

For recall this chiller is cooling the SL electronics and head as well as beam dumps for PMC REFL, IPC 1, IMC REFL. 

Images attached to this report
Detector Operation (Operations Report)
berni - 15:41 Tuesday 06 October 2026 (69864) Print this report
Operator Report - Morning shift

ITF found in locked arms IR.

At 6:00 UTC ITF in maintenance mode, below the list of the activities communicated in control room:

The cryotrap refill was delayed and the maintenance was completed at 11:34 UTC; after that the ITF was relocked at CARM_NULL_1F after the CITFmanual prealignment. 

At around 13:00 UTC started the planned commissioning activity of DC read-out locking.

 

 

AdV-INJ (Input Mode Cleaner cavity)
melo, spinicelli, gosselin, lagabbe, mantovani - 13:53 Tuesday 06 October 2026 (69862) Print this report
OLTF verification with IMC_REFL variation

Today we verified the best comprise in terms of OLTF for the power at 18W and 12W with different values for the IMC_REFL_DC power.

For this, we measured the OLTF after varying the REFL power with the IPC1 rotator from remote. 

We had the following results at 18 W:

  • with REFL at 0.85W -> OLTF 142 kHz and 9 deg phase margin;
  • with REFL at 0.73W -> OLTF 114 kHz and 19 deg phase margin;
  • with REFL at 0.68W -> OLTF 96 kHz and 24 deg phase margin;

From 0.73 of IMC_REFL_DC we descrease the power of IMC_TRA from 18W to 12W and remeasured the OLTF (the corresponding value of IMC_REFL_DC at 12W is 0.64W):

  • with REFL at 0.64W -> OLTF at 65 kHz and 28 deg phase margin;
  • with REFL at 0.6W -> OLTF at 53 kHz and 18.3 deg phase margin.

Analyzing the data, we decided to choose the best compromise for the REFL_DC value, which is 0.73W of REFL for 18W, corresponding to 0.64W of REFL for 12W. Figs. 1 and 2 show respectively the OLTF for these two configurations. 

For the 12W OLTF there is apparently some noise structure very close to the UGF (also present for 18W but farther away from the UGF). Looking closely at it (Fig. 3), we can see that it corresponds to some excitation lines with unknown origin. This doesn't seem to generate control issues. 

Images attached to this report
AdV-ISC (Commissioning up to first full interferometer lock)
mantovani, spinicelli - 9:46 Tuesday 06 October 2026 (69861) Print this report
Comment to OMC lock and hand-off to B1 PD3 (69857)

Moreover we have commented the BS full bandwidth in low noise (line 6094 and 6095)

AdV-DET (Commissioning)
mwas - 8:59 Tuesday 06 October 2026 (69860) Print this report
Comment to Last lock attempt in DC readout (69858)

Low B1x_DC_DARM_norm_prod is a sign of poor OMC alignment (or that the DARM 491.3Hz is lower than during O4 at the same stage of the lock acquisition).

Figure 1. Looking at the previous lock where a few minutes where spent with B1 PD1/PD2 open, LSC_B1_DARM_OG looks anti-correlated with SDB1_LC_TX, with the gain higher when SDB1_LC_TX is lower. I have adjusted the B5 QD2 V offset from 350 to 300 this morning, as during the alignment yesterday the two looked equally good, but with an alignment signal which was a DC power fluctuating by a factor 10, so with very large error bars. 

It would be useful to also enable the computation of the OMC dither error signals. In the automation these are computed only during the  LN2 lock acquistion:

            cm_send('SDB1_LC','AcRelayChTranSet','LC_B1_DARM_compute',1)

because each low noise actuator transition creates a large glitch in the computation of the error signal which takes several minutes to die down, as the signals are heavily low passed. Enabling the error signal computation for a few minutes once B1 PD1/PD2 are open without having any low noise transition after the computation starts could help finding if there is indeed an OMC misalignment or not.

Enabling the drift control loop at the same time as enabling the error signal computation, could also be a simple and efficient way of checking that, but with that loop closed the OMC alignment will be kicked if there is an actuator low noise transition            cm_send('SDB1_LC','AcRelayChTranSet','LC_B1_DARM_enbl',1)
 

 

Images attached to this comment
Detector Operation (Operations Report)
lunghini - 23:07 Monday 05 October 2026 (69854) Print this report
Operator Report - Afternoon shift

ITF found in COMMISSIONING Mode and LOCKING_ARMS_BEAT_DRMI_1F State.
All times are UTC.
At the beginning of the shift the activity on DC read-out locking was ongoing and wnet on up to 20:01 (Mantovani, Bersanetti, Spinicelli, Gouaty, #69857, #69856).
19:57 ITF reached LOCKED_DC_READOUT state.
20:07 - 20:59 Test lock acquisition to LOW_NOISE_2 state, power increased when ITF reached CARM_NULL_1F state, ITF unlocked in ACQUIRE_LOW_NOISE_1 state at 20:59:38. As instructed by the experts after the unlock I manually set INJ power to 12 W and re-initated INJ_MAIN Metatron node.
ITF left in COMMISSIONING Mode and LOCKED_ARMS_IR State.

Guard tours:
17:57, 20:31

Images attached to this report
AdV-DET (Commissioning)
lunghini, gouaty - 23:05 Monday 05 October 2026 (69858) Print this report
Last lock attempt in DC readout

At the end of the shift we performed a lock attempt up to LN2. We managed to reach DC readout but then the ITF shortly unlocked (see attached figure).

During this trial, the OMC did not manage to lock at first attempt, because the B1x_DC_DARM_norm_prod signal was not reaching the lock threshold set at 2000. We decreased this threshold to 1500 (done at 20h54 utc) and then the OMC locked successfully.

Images attached to this report
Comments to this report:
mwas - 8:59 Tuesday 06 October 2026 (69860) Print this report

Low B1x_DC_DARM_norm_prod is a sign of poor OMC alignment (or that the DARM 491.3Hz is lower than during O4 at the same stage of the lock acquisition).

Figure 1. Looking at the previous lock where a few minutes where spent with B1 PD1/PD2 open, LSC_B1_DARM_OG looks anti-correlated with SDB1_LC_TX, with the gain higher when SDB1_LC_TX is lower. I have adjusted the B5 QD2 V offset from 350 to 300 this morning, as during the alignment yesterday the two looked equally good, but with an alignment signal which was a DC power fluctuating by a factor 10, so with very large error bars. 

It would be useful to also enable the computation of the OMC dither error signals. In the automation these are computed only during the  LN2 lock acquistion:

            cm_send('SDB1_LC','AcRelayChTranSet','LC_B1_DARM_compute',1)

because each low noise actuator transition creates a large glitch in the computation of the error signal which takes several minutes to die down, as the signals are heavily low passed. Enabling the error signal computation for a few minutes once B1 PD1/PD2 are open without having any low noise transition after the computation starts could help finding if there is indeed an OMC misalignment or not.

Enabling the drift control loop at the same time as enabling the error signal computation, could also be a simple and efficient way of checking that, but with that loop closed the OMC alignment will be kicked if there is an actuator low noise transition            cm_send('SDB1_LC','AcRelayChTranSet','LC_B1_DARM_enbl',1)
 

 

Images attached to this comment
AdV-DET (Commissioning)
bersanetti, mantovani, boldrini, spinicelli, gouaty - 22:14 Monday 05 October 2026 (69856) Print this report
OMC shutter mode of operation

During the afternoon shift, we updated DET_MAIN.py in order to use the MOVELIMIT command to close or open the OMC. DET_MAIN node was reloaded at 14h05 utc. Unfortunately after this change the OMC shutter was not opening any more. I also tried to open it directly from the VPM intervace with the MOVELIMIT command (in both directions), but the shutter was not opening. I therefore open manually the shutter using the old command. Changes reverted in DET_MAIN.py.

DET_MAIN reloaded at 15h17 utc.

AdV-ISC (Commissioning up to first full interferometer lock)
mantovani, gouaty, bersanetti, spinicelli - 22:01 Monday 05 October 2026 (69857) Print this report
OMC lock and hand-off to B1 PD3

After Romain has locked we tried to make the hand-off to B1 PD3

we have measured the TF DARM_INPUT/B1_DC_INPUT  which was equal to 0.017 (it was 0.0027); the B1_SET was 0.0 

then we increased the offset to get the good powers on PD1 and PD2. the final offset is -7.8

the Hand-off worked without changing the DARM gain (the line 5196 will be left commented as the 5365).

 

Comments to this report:
mantovani, spinicelli - 9:46 Tuesday 06 October 2026 (69861) Print this report

Moreover we have commented the BS full bandwidth in low noise (line 6094 and 6095)

AdV-ISC (Commissioning up to first full interferometer lock)
boldrini, bossilkov, mantovani, bersanetti, was, gouaty, nardecchia - 16:11 Monday 05 October 2026 (69855) Print this report
ISC shift: DC readout recovery in progress

After the TCS step, we proceeded with the recovery of the OMC lock and of the DC readout.

After setting metatron in OMC_SCAN and reducing the DIFFp lines to decrease the overall rms on B1_PD3, we allowed the DET crew to attempt the OMC lock, which was successful.

Trying the hand-off of DARM to B1_DC failed, possibly due to low gain. The hand-off is commented in the automation (lines 5196, 5197), including the population of the relative sensing matrix element (lines 5181, 5182, 5183) in order to manually re-try the hand-off after re-measuring the calibration factor of the new error signal.

This was left for the afternoon to try after the daily meeting.

Detector Operation (Operations Report)
menzione - 15:55 Monday 05 October 2026 (69851) Print this report
Operator Report - Morning shift

ITF found in LOCKED_ARMS_IR in COMMISSIONING mode.
Relocked up to CARM_NULL_1F after the usual cross-alignment in ACQUIRE_DRMI at third attempt.

The planned activity on DC read-out locking (Boldrini, Was) started at 07:00 UTC. Still in progress... 

Images attached to this report
AdV-TCS (Ring Heater)
boldrini, mantovani, nardecchia, was - 14:14 Monday 05 October 2026 (69852) Print this report
TCS tuning part.11 [WE RH & CH]

On Friday, a pure differential change was applied (69846), with the goal of changing the ETM RoCs by ±2 m:

RoC_NE: 1669.6 m → 1667.6 m [9.82 W (19.1 V)]
RoC_WE: 1670.5 m → 1672.5 m [9.00 W (18.3 V)]

During the weekend, Michal suggested acting only on the WE RH, decreasing its RoC by 1.5 m in case the dark fringe was bright during the next lock:

RoC_WE: 1672.5 m [9.00 W (18.3 V)] → 1671.0 m [9.6 W (18.9 V)]

During this morning's CARM NULL lock, the dark fringe was quite bright, at around 0.04 mW. Therefore, at 07:23 UTC, the WE RH power was increased to 9.6 W (18.9 V), corresponding to a target RoC of about 1671.0 m.
The effect was as expected, with a reduction in both B1p power and the SSFS-to-DARM coupling (fig.1). 
During the work on the OMC, at 09:13 UTC, the ITF unlocked, and we took the opportunity to follow up on the 10% common DAS increase performed on Friday (69844) by increasing the CH powers by 10% (ITF in CITF).
Thus, now the power injected into the ITF are:

 

 

CH [W]

INNER DAS [W]

OUTER DAS [W]

WI

on the ITF

0.070 → 0.077

0

2.034

on the pickoff 

0.427→0.47

0

0.331

NI

on the ITF

0.064→ 0.0704

0.351

1.426

on the pickoff 

0.392→0.431

0.057

0.232

 

Images attached to this report
AdV-ISC (Commissioning up to first full interferometer lock)
ruggi - 11:08 Monday 05 October 2026 (69853) Print this report
Comment to Local damper on PR mirror vertical mode at 11.6 Hz (69799)

As expected, the local damper of PR mirror vertical mode at 11.6 Hz is noise enough to keep the resonance permanently excited. Turning it off, the resonance disappear from PRCL spectrum. Apparently the locking instability at 11.6 Hz is not there when the ITF is well tuned and PRCL is clean enough. We can try a lock acquisition without the damper, or eventually continue using it up to a certain locking step.  

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On-call intervention (General)
Oncall-system - 18:14 Saturday 03 October 2026 (69850) Print this report
On-call intervention

The following report has been submitted to the On-call interface.

On-call events -> Air Conditioning

Title: Chiamata per regolazione parametri impianto HVAC mensa

Author(s): Pezzimenti Francesco

Called at: 12:00, 03-10-2026, by: Other colleague
Remote intervention: Started: ; Ended:
On-site intervention: Started: 17:23, 03-10-2026; Ended: 18:20, 03-10-2026
Status: Resolved
Operator when issue resolved: None

Details:

Sono stato chiamato Da Soldani per effettuare delle regolazioni all'impianto HVAC della mensa, per l'evento di stasera.. Le regolazioni sono state effettuate in loco, confrontandomi telefonicamente con i tecnici del reparto di riferimento..

* Note that any files attached to this report are available in the On-call interface.

AdV-ISC (Commissioning up to first full interferometer lock)
boldrini, bersanetti, spinicelli, bossilkov, lumaca, corubolo, was - 20:45 Friday 02 October 2026 (69847) Print this report
ISC support to DAS/RH steps

We supported the TCS team during the thermal actuators' adjustments.

After the common RH step and the differential DAS step, we noticed that the ITF was jumping between two metastable states (Fig.1). The ~3 minutes period of these jumps made us think of a correlation with the diagonalizaton routine. We waited for the ITF to jump in the "good" state, the one with the darker fringe and the higher sidebands' power, and disabled the servo to verify the hipothesis. The jumps stopped, giving comfirmation that diagonalization was indeed driving them, but it is unclear what exactly the servo was chasing when it made these changes.

After the common step of RH the interferometer's tuning gradually improved (Fig.2), although the superposition of the thermal transients of the first RH step, the DAS step and of this last RH step makes it complicated to pinpoint the exact cause of this improvement.

During this transient the ITF unlocked due to a WI glitch (Fig.3) and we reduced the power manually to allow the INJ_MAIN node to recover the IMC. This was harder than yesterday: between the movement of the half-lambda plate and the alignment of the bench, the reflected power of the IMC is close to the critical value (0.68 W - 0.79 W, Fig.4) and we had to increase the transmitted power a little to clear this threshold. The INJ servo then adjusted the rotator setpoint without issues.

After the next lock we increased the power again to keep observing the thermal transient, but the lock was killed 15 minutes after the acquisition by another WI glitch (Fig.5)

We have began the development of the power increase automation in carm_null_1f, for the moment offline, to be deployed later. For the moment, ITF_LOCK.py is unmodified and executes as usual.

We leave the ITF with the arms locked.

Images attached to this report
AdV-ISC (Alignment control scheme conceptual design)
bersanetti, boldrini, mantovani - 20:43 Friday 02 October 2026 (69849) Print this report
Etalon loops setpoint change

At the end of the activity  today we moved the etalon loops setpoints up one full fringe, with a ramp of two days:

  • NI = 20.207 -> 20.464 degC;
  • WI = 19.6 -> 19.857 degC.
AdV-DET (Commissioning)
bersanetti - 20:37 Friday 02 October 2026 (69848) Print this report
Comment to Adaptation of detection safety thresholds to 18W input power (69845)

As stated at the daily meeting, the automation would have received some modifications during the afternoon. and the actual deployment would have been decided by the people in shift onsite at the end of the activity.

Despite that, and despite the fact that ITF_LOCK doesn't need a reload when the .ini file gets modified, this happened, from offsite, without any communication to the control room and the people in shift. Luckily, most of my changes were not saved yet, but this is not the way to go.

All changes have been reverted, and any kind of development has been aborted for the day, on purpose.

AdV-TCS (CO2 laser projector)
boldrini, bersanetti, corubolo, lumaca, nardecchia, spinicelli, was - 20:08 Friday 02 October 2026 (69846) Print this report
Comment to TCS tuning part.7 (69844)

At around 14.00 UTC, some jumps started to appear in the main ITF signals (see fig.1). Assuming that the jumps could be related to some higher-order mode, Michal suggested to change the ETM RH settings to move the cavity away from this critical region. 

Before starting the tuning of the ETM RHs, the configuration was:

NE: V = 18.3 V (9.02 W)
RoC_NE = 1669.6 m

WE: V = 19.1 V (9.80 W)
RoC_WE = 1670.5 m

A pure differential change was therefore applied, with the goal of changing the RoCs by:

RoC_NE: -2 m
RoC_WE: +2 m

At 15:09 UTC, the RH settings were changed to:

NE: 9.02 W (18.3 V) → 9.82 W (19.1 V)

WE: 9.00 W (18.3 V)

Later, Piernicola and Mattia realized that the jumps were actually related to the diagonalization. After disabling it, the jumps disappeared).

At 16:25 UTC, the ITF unlocked due to a glitch.

From this point onward, the ISC team worked on the lock acquisition automation.

The effect of the step will need to be evaluated during the next locks.

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AdV-DET (Commissioning)
gouaty, mwas - 18:32 Friday 02 October 2026 (69845) Print this report
Adaptation of detection safety thresholds to 18W input power

This afternoon we have updated the following thresholds on the detection system, in accordance with the increase of the input power from 12 to 18 W:

  • we updated the thresholds on SDB2_Photodiodes triggering the fast shutter for B1p_PD1 and B1p_PD2 (B1s was already changed yesterday). All thresholds multiplied by a factor 3/2 in the configuration:

ACL_RELAY_CH    B1p_PD1_DC_saturation        au    SAMP_FREQ    0    2    -2    B1p_PD1_DC    0.82 0.58 >=   #0.55 0.39 #0.82 0.58 #1.65 1.166 #3.4    2.4  #2 0.7
ACL_RELAY_CH    B1p_PD2_DC_saturation        au    SAMP_FREQ    0    2    -2    B1p_PD2_DC    1.17 0.29    >= #0.78 0.19 #1.17 0.29 #2.35 0.588 #4 1
ACL_RELAY_CH    B1s_PD1_DC_saturation        au    SAMP_FREQ    0    2    -2    B1s_PD1_DC    45    22    >=   #30 #45    22 #35 20 #45 22 #90    45 #43 12

  • Thresholds in ITF_LOCK.ini for B1p_PD1 have been increased accordingly:
    • in the section SHUTTER: b1p_pd1_thr_lo = 0.3 ; b1p_pd1_thr_hi = 0.5 ; b1p_dc_thr = 0.04
    • in the section ITF_LOCK: b1p_pd1_thr_lo = 1.5 ; b1p_pd1_thr_hi = 3.0

We used the external configuration of SDB2_Photodiodes in order to apply the new threshold on B1p_PD1 (3.0 instead of 2.5) while the ITF was locked in CARM_NULL_1F.

  • Thresholds in DET_MAIN.ini have also been increased by the same factor, namely:

max_power_B1p = 0.04, max_power_B1p_PD1 = 0.44, max_power_B1s = 45 (unchanged with respect to yesterday)

Both DET_MAIN and ITF_LOCK were reloaded at 16h34 utc after an ITF unlock.

Comments to this report:
bersanetti - 20:37 Friday 02 October 2026 (69848) Print this report

As stated at the daily meeting, the automation would have received some modifications during the afternoon. and the actual deployment would have been decided by the people in shift onsite at the end of the activity.

Despite that, and despite the fact that ITF_LOCK doesn't need a reload when the .ini file gets modified, this happened, from offsite, without any communication to the control room and the people in shift. Luckily, most of my changes were not saved yet, but this is not the way to go.

All changes have been reverted, and any kind of development has been aborted for the day, on purpose.

AdV-TCS (CO2 laser projector)
corubolo, lumaca, nardecchia, pinto, was, mantovani, spinicelli, boldrini, bersanetti, menzione, gherardini - 16:41 Friday 02 October 2026 (69844) Print this report
TCS tuning part.7

First, we implemented the lock acquisition procedure performed yesterday evening: it worked reliably again this morning.

At 07:23 UTC, Manuel gradually increased the injected power up to 17.5 W (INJ_IMC_TRA_DC) in CARM_NULL_1F. The ITF unlocked at 07:53 UTC due to a suspension glitch similar to previous events.

We reacquired CARM_NULL_1F at around 08:11 UTC with an injected power of 17.7 W, closer to the nominal 18 W. The ITF unlocked at 08:27 UTC, as MICH and DARM drifted away without a clear trigger.

Finally, at 08:43 UTC, CARM_NULL_1F was acquired again at 17.8 W of injected power.

At this point, we started the thermal tuning; the initial configuration is reported in 69838.

The plan is to explore the effect of the WI DAS IN power and to perform a differential step. We agreed to double the NI DAS IN injected power and evaluate its effect on the ITF.

08:56 UTC STEP 1
WI DAS IN +100%

The SBs responded quite rapidly going down and the dark fringe worsened, indicating that increasing the WI DAS IN power is not the correct direction. So we agreed to close the flip mirror of the WI INner DAS.

09:38 UTC STEP 2
WI DAS IN set to 0 (flip mirror closed)

See Fig. 1 for ITF signals corresponding to these two steps.


Since the DAS differential steps did not seem to have a significant impact, Michal suggested performing a differential ETM RH step. In particular, we decreased the WE RoC by acting on the RH, as the strong PA on the WI is expected to induce additional curvature

10.31 UTC STEP 3
WE RH RoC reduced by 4 m, that is V = 19.1 V → 20.6 V and P = 9.8 W → 11.4 W

This last step rapidly increased the dark fringe brightness (see Fig. 2), so the step was reversed and then continued in the opposite direction of the same amount.

11.03 UTC STEP 4
WE RH RoC increased by 8 m, that is V = 20.6 V → 17.5 V and P = 11.4 W → 8.2 W

The effect of the last step of WE RH seemed good: B1p decreased up to 0.02 mW (around 12.40 UTC), before restarting to rise up (see fig 3).

13:29 UTC STEP 5
NI DAS IN and OUT +10%
WI DAS OUT +10%

The effect of this last step is ongoing.

The configuration of the CO2 actuators, so far, is summarized in the table below:

 

 

 CH [W] 

 INNER DAS [W] 

 OUTER DAS [W] 

 WI 

 on the ITF

0.070

0

2.034

 on the pickoff  

0.427

0

0.331

 NI 

 on the ITF

0.064

0.351

1.426

 on the pickoff  

0.392

0.057

0.232

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boldrini, bersanetti, corubolo, lumaca, nardecchia, spinicelli, was - 20:08 Friday 02 October 2026 (69846) Print this report

At around 14.00 UTC, some jumps started to appear in the main ITF signals (see fig.1). Assuming that the jumps could be related to some higher-order mode, Michal suggested to change the ETM RH settings to move the cavity away from this critical region. 

Before starting the tuning of the ETM RHs, the configuration was:

NE: V = 18.3 V (9.02 W)
RoC_NE = 1669.6 m

WE: V = 19.1 V (9.80 W)
RoC_WE = 1670.5 m

A pure differential change was therefore applied, with the goal of changing the RoCs by:

RoC_NE: -2 m
RoC_WE: +2 m

At 15:09 UTC, the RH settings were changed to:

NE: 9.02 W (18.3 V) → 9.82 W (19.1 V)

WE: 9.00 W (18.3 V)

Later, Piernicola and Mattia realized that the jumps were actually related to the diagonalization. After disabling it, the jumps disappeared).

At 16:25 UTC, the ITF unlocked due to a glitch.

From this point onward, the ISC team worked on the lock acquisition automation.

The effect of the step will need to be evaluated during the next locks.

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Detector Operation (Operations Report)
menzione - 16:00 Friday 02 October 2026 (69841) Print this report
Operator Report - Morning shift

ITF found in LOCKED_ARMS_IR in COMMISSIONING mode.
At 06:00 UTC I locked ITF up to CARM_NULL_1F at first attempt.

Then the planed activity on "TCS tuning / CARM NULL locking (Pinto, Corubolo, Lumaca)" started. Still in progress...

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AdV-ISC (Commissioning up to first full interferometer lock)
melo - 11:43 Friday 02 October 2026 (69843) Print this report
Comment to Mid-lock power increase experiment (69839)

Following the increase in input beam power, I repeated the analysis of the PAs on the ITMs.

Figures 1 and 2 show the NI maps, while Figures 3 and 4 show the WI maps.

The new analysis confirms the PAs identified in #69827 for both mirrors. The higher input power also allows for a slightly more precise estimation of their thermal signatures compared to the previous analysis.

For the NI, the high-temperature region observed at the center of the mirror appears to have a smaller impact in terms of ΔT with a value below 0.2 °C compared to approximately 0.3 °C in the previous analysis. The stronger PAs, instead, are consistent with the previous analysis in both position and estimated ΔT.

For the WI, the results are overall consistent with the analysis performed at lower input power. The estimated ΔT values of the two main PAs are slightly higher, at approximately 0.9 °C and 0.46 °C for PA1 and PA2, respectively. In addition, at least four other weaker PAs can be identified, with estimated ΔT values of around 0.2 °C, consistent with the features already observed in the previous analysis.

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