David Notebook

5/14/14 1064 laser was more difficult than usual to align, was very prone to drift, and only locked passably well. Gas pressure is about 0.3 atm. Josh says it's been like this for a few days, although it seemed to show slight improvement in the afternoon. We set up a mirror on the 1064 side so that we can send 807, 1064, and 1555 from the cavity to a fiber launch or a prism. On the Saffman group's OSA, we could see all 3 beams with rotational sidebands. It seemed there were some only vibrational modes too, but we haven't tried to repeat this yet. Putting in a filter dropped the 807 signal by about 10 dBm and made the 1064 and 1555 no longer visible on the OSA, however 1064 could still be seen very faintly with the IR viewer after the prism. We're confident we're seeing pure 807 after the prism due the to OSA signals and since we can clearly see 1064 and 807 diverge. Sending the 807 about 8 feet away to the wall, the separation between 807 and 1064 is about a foot. Depending on the mode, we see 1-2 or 5+ sidebands on 807 over about an inch.

Froze snack banana for 10-15 seconds in nitrogen. Ice clearly formed on the peel, but the interior was only somewhat cold. Will try for 30 seconds next time.