[Sander, Daniel, Jeff]

We have powered on the seeder laser and amplifier in B111B and confirmed a beam on the optical table. The initial Faraday isolator is not aligned, and we powered off the amplifier and laser until tomorrow morning. Both the seeder and amplifier are plugged into the Furman power conditioner as described here. Here was our procedure:

First, power on only the seeder and verify that it is producing light by placing a power meter at the output of the power beamsplitter where the beam dump usually is. We saw 15mW on the power meter and then replaced the beam dump.

Next, we powered on the amplifier by first plugging it into a delay 2 slot on the Furman and then flipping the switch on the back of the laser amplifier. We adjusted the fiber polarizing beam splitter paddles (between the seeder laser and amplifier) until the input power to the laser amplifier read 24mW. We then turned the key on the amplifier and hit enable. There is a beam coming onto the table! Seen with a high power beam viewer card.

The beam is not making it through the Faraday isolator, and this does not change even when rotating the half wave plate, so we conclude it is not aligned.

We proceeded with a shutdown procedure, confirming the current was minimized on the amplifier, hitting disable, then turning the key in the laser amplifier. Next we turned off the seeder using the switch on the front, and finally we powered everything off using the Furman. The Furman shutdown sequence is quite long (2 minutes) as it is currently configured, we will shorten it to 30s total before turning on the system again.