R&D (FilterCavity)
MichaelPage - 00:04, Thursday 31 October 2024 (3806)
Infrared beams to OPO

I checked alignment of ppol to OPO. It was a bit bad (maybe 80% mode matching, fig 1). I realigned to 86.2% (fig 2). It seems in the past the alignment of ppol to OPO was never really that critical anyway.

Since the laser was just activated, the ppol lock was not so stable - this is normal for about 2 hours after laser activation. ppol PLL quite regularly unlocks and relocks when the laser is warming up but it seems to go back to normal after a while.

There is some odd behaviour where sometimes if I touch the steering mirrors a small amount there is an extra mode which flashes on and off. Normally the main ppol mode isn't that sensitive to the steering mirror tuning. Also in transmission of OPO I can see some flashing on the sensor card, displaced about 5mm in yaw from the TEM00 mode.

I looked a bit at BAB and it seems also ok, maybe just a small tweak. But I didn't touch it or take a picture yet.