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arXiv:1901.04851 · Review of Scientific Instruments

A scalable hardware and software control apparatus for experiments with hybrid quantum systems

Elia Perego, Marco Pomponio, Amelia Detti, Lucia Duca, Carlo Sias, Claudio Eligio Calosso

Published Nov 1, 2018• 22 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Modern experiments with fundamental quantum systems - like ultracold atoms, trapped ions, and single photons - are managed by a control system formed by a number of input/output electronic channels governed by a computer. In hybrid quantum systems, where two or more quantum systems are combined and made to interact, establishing an efficient control system is particularly challenging due to the higher complexity, especially when each single quantum system is characterized by a different time scale. Here we present a new control apparatus specifically designed to efficiently manage hybrid quantum systems. The apparatus is formed by a network of fast communicating Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), the action of which is administrated by a software. Both hardware and software share the same tree-like structure, which ensures a full scalability of the control apparatus. In the hardware, a master board acts on a number of slave boards, each of which is equipped with an FPGA that locally drives analog and digital input/output channels and radiofrequency outputs up to 400 MHz. The software is designed to be a general platform for managing both commercial and home-made instruments in a user-friendly and intuitive graphical user interface. The architecture ensures that complex control protocols can be carried out, such as performing of concurrent commands loops by acting on different channels, the generation of multi-variable error functions, and the implementation of self-optimization procedures. Although designed for managing experiments with hybrid quantum systems, in particular with atom-ion mixtures, this control apparatus can in principle be used in any experiment in atomic, molecular, and optical physics.

DOI
10.1063/1.5049120

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Modern experiments with fundamental quantum systems - like ultracold atoms, trapped ions, and single photons - are managed by a control system formed by a number of input/output electronic channels governed by a computer. In hybrid quantum systems, where two or more quantum systems are combined and made to interact, establishing an efficient control system is particularly challenging due to the higher complexity, especially when each single quantum system is characterized by a different time scale. Here we present a new control apparatus specifically designed to efficiently manage hybrid quantum systems. The apparatus is formed by a network of fast communicating Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), the action of which is administrated by a software. Both hardware and software share the same tree-like structure, which ensures a full scalability of the control apparatus. In the hardware, a master board acts on a number of slave boards, each of which is equipped with an FPGA that locally drives analog and digital input/output channels and radiofrequency outputs up to 400 MHz. The software is designed to be a general platform for managing both commercial and home-made instruments in a user-friendly and intuitive graphical user interface. The architecture ensures that complex control protocols can be carried out, such as performing of concurrent commands loops by acting on different channels, the generation of multi-variable error functions, and the implementation of self-optimization procedures. Although designed for managing experiments with hybrid quantum systems, in particular with atom-ion mixtures, this control apparatus can in principle be used in any experiment in atomic, molecular, and optical physics.
Large-scale qubit systems represent the future of superconducting quantum computing. As the number of qubits and functions increases, the current qubit control architectures struggle to achieve large-scale expansion. To address this issue, we have developed a field-programmable gate array-based scheduling system, which serves as a control architecture deployed on measurement and control hardware. This system achieves the generation of multi-channel long sequence pulses using minimal storage space, with reusable envelope and instruction designs. The envelopes and instructions are preloaded into the electronics, with each instruction corresponding to a different segment of the output waveform. The architecture we designed allows for extended pulse control lengths and more complex experiments without the requirement for external storage resources. We present the resource utilization of the implementation and compare it with previous measurements under different qubit counts. To verify the functionality of the system, we conducted a series of performance tests and characterization experiments on the deployed electronics. The measured single-qubit relaxation time T1 is 34.1 μs, and the dephasing time T2* is 25.8 μs. We characterized the quality of the control pulses using a randomized benchmarking protocol, achieving an average fidelity of 99.962%.
We present a versatile rf pulse control system that has been designed for multi-qubit quantum experiments. One instrument can be scaled to provide 32 channels of rf between 10 - 450 MHz. Synchronization can be achieved across multiple instruments. By using direct digital synthesis and custom control circuitry contained within a field-programmable gate array, sequences of transform-limited pulses can be produced. These have been used to carry out quantum gates that are able to meet fault-tolerant thresholds for single- and two-qubit gate fidelities, as published elsewhere. We have also extended the frequency to the gigahertz regime using additional mixers to address hyperfine transitions in atomic systems. The system uses an efficient memory management scheme and a low-latency communications protocol that allows pulse sequences to be updated in real-time. Together these can enable outcome-based algorithms such as quantum error correction to be executed. The system is fully programmable in C++, and other languages such as Python can be supported by the on-board CPU, offering a highly flexible platform for a wide variety of experimental systems, and has been proven in trapped-ion quantum information experiments.
We report a design and implementation of a field-programmable-gate-arrays (FPGA) based hardware platform, which is used to realize control and signal readout of trapped-ion-based multi-level quantum systems. This platform integrates a four-channel 2.8 Gsps@14 bits arbitrary waveform generator, a 16-channel 1 Gsps@14 bits direct-digital-synthesis-based radio-frequency generator, a 16-channel 8 ns resolution pulse generator, a 10-channel 16 bits digital-to-analog-converter module, and a 2-channel proportion integration differentiation controller. The hardware platform can be applied in the trapped-ion-based multi-level quantum systems, enabling quantum control of multi-level quantum system and high-dimensional quantum simulation. The platform is scalable and more channels for control and signal readout can be implemented by utilizing more parallel duplications of the hardware. The hardware platform also has a bright future to be applied in scaled trapped-ion-based quantum systems.
We have developed an electronic hardware system for the control and readout of multi-superconducting qubit devices. The hardware system is based on the design ideas of good scalability, high synchronization and low latency. The system, housed inside a VPX-6U chassis, includes multiple arbitrary-waveform generator (AWG) channels, analog-digital-converter (ADC) channels as well as direct current source channels. The system can be used for the control and readout of up to twelve superconducting transmon qubits in one chassis, and control and readout of more and more qubit can be carried out by interconnecting the chassis. By using field programmable gate array (FPGA) processors, the system incorporates three features that are specifically useful for superconducting qubit research. Firstly, qubit signals can be processed using the on-board FPGA after being acquired by ADCs, significantly reducing data processing time and data amount for storage and transmission. Secondly, different output modes, such as direct output and sequential output modes, of AWG can be implemented with pre-encoded FPGA. Thirdly, with data acquisition ADCs and controlAWGs jointly controlled by the same FPGA, the feedback latency can be reduced, and in ourtest a 178.4 ns latency time is realized. This is very useful for future quantum feedback experiments. Finally, we demonstrate the functionality of the system by applying the system to the control and readout of a 10 qubit superconducting quantum processor.
The implementation of a classical control infrastructure for large-scale quantum computers is challenging due to the need for integration and processing time, which is constrained by coherence time. We propose a cryogenic reconfigurable platform as the heart of the control infrastructure implementing the digital error-correction control loop. The platform is implemented on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) that supports the functionality required by several qubit technologies and that can operate close to the physical qubits over a temperature range from 4 K to 300 K. This work focuses on the extensive characterization of the electronic platform over this temperature range. All major FPGA building blocks (such as look-up tables (LUTs), carry chains (CARRY4), mixed-mode clock manager (MMCM), phase-locked loop (PLL), block random access memory, and IDELAY2 (programmable delay element)) operate correctly and the logic speed is very stable. The logic speed of LUTs and CARRY4 changes less then 5%, whereas the jitter of MMCM and PLL clock managers is reduced by 20%. The stability is finally demonstrated by operating an integrated 1.2 GSa/s analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with a relatively stable performance over temperature. The ADCs effective number of bits drops from 6 to 4.5 bits when operating at 15 K.
This paper proposes a control system capable of supporting various qubit platforms by combining control units with different specifications with a lightweight and common interface. To realize quantum computers, several qubit platforms, such as superconducting qubits, neutral atoms, ion traps, and semi-conductor quantum dots, are being researched. Each platform requires different microwave frequencies, channel numbers, intensities, and time scales for control. However, building individual control systems for each platform is not practical from a development cost perspective. Therefore, the standardization of control systems is desired. In practice, common languages and libraries for pulse control software are being developed as both commercial products and open-source projects. However, no widely adopted standardization methods currently exist for the control layer of electrical signals responsible for qubit manipulation. This paper first organizes the challenges in standardizing the control layer of electrical signals. It then proposes an architecture to address these challenges, featuring Ethernet-based unit inter-connections, a synchronization system based on time and pulses, and a lightweight and flexible waveform generation method. The proposed approach allows for practical cost adaptation to various types of qubits by connecting electronic circuits with specifications required for the target qubit platform.