This morning I made a test, once in LOW_NOISE_3, to increase the 8 MHz sideband, which is kept at 5 dBm (15 dBm was the default one); I increased it back to 15 dBm in two steps:

• 12:49:00 LT: from 5 dBm to 10 dBm (gold trace);
• 13:01:00 LT: from 10 to 15 dBm (blue trace).

Comparison is made with respect to the standard 5 dBm (purple trace); DARM is clearly limited by something else, as there is no improvement visibile, while the improvement is seen on PRCL and the PRCL-to-DARM coherence at low frequency, while at higher frequency the effect seems to be opposite, although smaller; however, the second step is not so effective, and the B2_sample channel increases quite a bit, still being under the 0.4 mW threshold, but not by much.

For the upcoming run the amplitude is therefore increased by default (once in LOW_NOISE_3) to 10 dBm.