Advanced physics experiments require computer control systems to coordinate the apparatus on time scales from hours to nanoseconds. In this thesis I present a new software system, the labscript suite, for controlling modern ultracold atom experiments. Labscript prepares experiments from Python code and a list of parameters, generating instructions for heterogeneous hardware: pulse sequencers, analog input/output, and radio-frequency synthesis devices, which in turn execute the experiment in strict real time. Other software components automate scheduling of long-running experimental sequences, and the analysis of results. The labscript suite rapidly creates sophisticated experiments, flexibly analyses results, and archives the data.
Advanced physics experiments require computer control systems to coordinate the apparatus on time scales from hours to nanoseconds. In this thesis I present a new software system, the labscript suite, for controlling modern ultracold atom experiments. Labscript prepares experiments from Python code and a list of parameters, generating instructions for heterogeneous hardware: pulse sequencers, analog input/output, and radio-frequency synthesis devices, which in turn execute the experiment in strict real time. Other software components automate scheduling of long-running experimental sequences, and the analysis of results. The labscript suite rapidly creates sophisticated experiments, flexibly analyses results, and archives the data.
Experimental quantum physics and computing platforms rely on sophisticated computer control and timing systems that must be deterministic. An exemplar is the sequence used to create a Bose-Einstein condensate at the University of Illinois, which involves 46,812 analog and digital transitions over 100 seconds with 20 ns timing precision and nanosecond timing drift. We present a control and sequencing platform, using industry-standard National Instruments hardware to generate the necessary digital and analog signals, that achieves this level of performance. The system uses a master 10 MHz reference clock that is conditioned to the Global Positioning Satellite constellation and leverages low-phase-noise clock distribution hardware for timing stability. A Python-based user front-end provides a flexible language to describe experimental procedures and easy-to-implement version control. A library of useful peripheral hardware that can be purchased as low-cost evaluation boards provides enhanced capabilities. We provide a GitHub repository containing example python sequences and libraries for peripheral devices as a resource for the community.
This thesis describes the design of a real-time control system for trapped ion quantum computer experiments. It is framed in the context of the QuantumIon project, a project at the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing that aims to provide a scalable, remote-operation ion trap for a wide variety of quantum research without the need for ‘expert’ ion-trap knowledge. The target users span the range of ion-trap researchers,algorithms researchers, performance benchmarking researchers, and quantum simulation researchers.The control system features a user programming language, remote access to a compiling server, a sub-nanosecond time sequencing engine, arbitrary waveform generation for pulse shaping, and fully adjustable internal parameters. This platform affords the user extraordinary flexibility for many research use cases without requiring physical access. High-speed precision timing is achieved through the use of FPGA technology, while internal consistency (necessary for usability by non-experts) is achieved through an abstraction layer approach. Supercomputing-grade network infrastructure is employed to meet the strict timing requirements. An extensive suite of calibration tools and results is available to monitor machine-dependent parameters of the experiment. A sophisticated symbolic algebra system is used to create powerful calculations of precision timing sequences. Extensive automation is employed to remove the need for physical access, thus providing quantum computing to a wide audience. Under this model even the lowest-level control is avail-able to support innovative new designs, while a “library” of pre-defined sequences is also available to leverage “best practice” gates for those wishing rapid results. Finally, the user language itself is designed to be portable, allowing bindings to current popular classical languages such as Matlab and Python, and can be expanded for use in quantum-specific languages such as Cirq, Quill, and QASM .Through this approach the control system for QuantumIon is a flexible, powerful, scalable, and robust platform that is expected to be in use for a long time
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.
As quantum computing continues to progress, there is an increasing need for standardized quantum network technology [1], [2] to connect quantum computers together. Experimental testbeds are necessary in order to develop quantum network software and hardware. Building a scalable testbed for data center-level quantum networks requires overcoming numerous engineering and technical challenges in quantum communications, quantum processing and quantum storage. In this work, we describe a software framework for use with an all-photonic quantum networking testbed. This framework is designed for rapid development and capable of automated execution of quantum experiments. We introduce PnPQ, an open-source, unified driver library for hardware commonly used in quantum optical experiments. On top of this low-level hardware control library, we present software modules for controlling and coordinating quantum network nodes using remote procedure calls (RPC). Finally, we describe high-level software for performing and analyzing quantum photonic experiments using these software modules. As a whole, these software components comprise the first version of a framework that will enable us to implement and test quantum network architectures. This framework is intended to help us move forward from building simple experiments to complex Quantum systems.
Precisely timed, multi-device control in atomic, molecular and optical physics is provided by specialized real-time systems, which impose their own terms on the description of the experiment: a program over a global clock, in which every stage boundary is an absolute time computed from everything preceding it. Such descriptions are tightly coupled -- changing one stage affects all later ones -- and are correspondingly hard to reuse, inspect, or move elsewhere. We introduce Wigner Time, a Python package in which the experimental procedure is instead represented as data: a table of timed updates, assembled by composing functions and referred to named points in the experiment rather than to absolute instants. Hardware enters only at a final conversion step, leaving the description readable and back-end agnostic. Wigner Time has run two cold-atom setups for more than two years, where taking the computation out of the real-time program improved the achievable temporal resolution five-fold; the design applies to any domain requiring precise multi-device timing.
Modern experiments with cold molecular ions have reached a high degree of complexity requiring frequent sample preparation, state initialization, and protocol execution while demanding precise control over multiple devices and laser sources. To maintain a high experimental duty cycle and robust measurement conditions, automation becomes essential. We present a fully automated control system for the preparation of trapped state-selected molecular ions and subsequent quantum logic-based experiments. Adaptive feedback routines based on real-time image analysis introduce and identify single molecular ions in atomic-ion Coulomb crystals. By appropriate manipulation of the trapping potentials, excess atomic ions are released from the trap to produce dual-species two-ion strings, specifically Ca+-N2+. After mass and state identification of the molecular ion, nanosecond-level synchronization of laser pulses employing the Sinara/ARTIQ framework and real-time data analysis enable quantum-logic-spectroscopic measurements. The present automated control system enables robust, unsupervised operation over extended periods resulting in an increase in the number of experimentation cycles by about a factor of ten compared to manual operation and a factor of about eight in loaded molecules in typical practical situations. The modular, distributed design of the system provides a scalable blueprint for similar molecular-ion experiments.