Quantum information communication, sensing, and computation often require complex and expensive instrumentation resulting in a large entry barrier. The Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit (QICK) overcomes this barrier for superconducting qubits with a collection of software and firmware for state-of-the-art radio frequency system on chip (RFSoC's) field programmable gate architecture (FPGA) chips. Here we present a software and firmware extension to QICK, the Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit - Defect Arbitrary Waveform Generator (QICK-DAWG), which is an open-source software and firmware package that supports full quantum control and measurement of nitrogen-vacancy defects in diamond and other quantum defects using RFSoC FPGAs. QICKDAWG extends QICK to the characterization of nitrogen-vacancy defects and other diamond quantum defects by implementing DC-1 GHz readout, AOM or gated laser control, and analog or photon counting readout options. QICK-DAWG also adds pulse sequence programs and data analysis scripts to collect and characterize photoluminescence (PL) intensity, optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) spectra, PL readout windows, Rabi oscillations, Ramsay interference spectra, Hahn echo spin-spin relaxation times T
2, and spin-lattice relaxation times T
1. We demonstrate that QICK-DAWG is a powerful new paradigm of open source quantum hardware that significantly lowers the entry barrier and cost for quantum sensing using quantum defects.
We report the first demonstration of using the Quantum Instrumentation and Control Kit (QICK) system on RFSoC-FPGA technology to drive the electro-optic intensity modulator that generate time-bin entangled photon pairs and to detect the photon signals. With the QICK system, we achieve high levels of performance metrics including coincidence-to-accidental ratio exceeding 150, and entanglement visibility exceeding 95%, consistent with performance metrics achieved using conventional waveform generators. We also demonstrate simultaneous detector readout using the digitization functional of QICK, achieving internal system synchronization time resolution of 3.2 ps. The work reported in this paper represents an explicit demonstration of the feasibility for replacing commercial waveform generators and time taggers with RFSoC-FPGA technology in the operation of a quantum network, representing a cost reduction of more than an order of magnitude.
The Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit (QICK) is a standalone open-source qubit controller that was first introduced in 2022. In this follow-up work, we present recent upgrades to the QICK and the experimental use cases they uniquely enabled for superconducting qubit systems. These include multiplexed signal generation and readout, mixer-free readout, predistorted fast flux pulses, and phase-coherent pulses for parametric operations, including high-fidelity parametric entangling gates. We explain in detail how the QICK was used to enable these experiments. Published by the American Physical Society 2024