Pulse programming in the field of
experimental physics
Experimental physics is the category of disciplines and sub-disciplines in the field of physics that are concerned with the observation of physical phenomena and experiments. Methods vary from discipline to discipline, from simple experiments and o ...
refers to engineering sinusoidal electromagnetic waveforms to have programmable frequencies, phases, and amplitudes. The main techniques and terminology arose in the study of
nuclear magnetic resonance
Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a physical phenomenon in which nuclei in a strong constant magnetic field are perturbed by a weak oscillating magnetic field (in the near field) and respond by producing an electromagnetic signal with a ...
(NMR) during the 1970s, but has since been adopted in many other experimental settings, usually associated with
quantum computing
Quantum computing is a type of computation whose operations can harness the phenomena of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, interference, and entanglement. Devices that perform quantum computations are known as quantum computers. Thou ...
experiments. These include
electron spin resonance
Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) or electron spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy is a method for studying materials that have unpaired electrons. The basic concepts of EPR are analogous to those of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), but the s ...
(ESR),
trapped ions,
quantum dots
Quantum dots (QDs) are semiconductor particles a few nanometres in size, having optical and electronic properties that differ from those of larger particles as a result of quantum mechanics. They are a central topic in nanotechnology. When the ...
, the phase/flux/charge across a
superconducting junctions, and many other quantum bit implementations. Traditionally, pulse programmers were built using hard-wired analog electronics to produce a fixed sequence of waveforms, but modern pulse programmers make use of
direct digital synthesis
Direct digital synthesis (DDS) is a method employed by frequency synthesizers used for creating arbitrary waveforms from a single, fixed-frequency reference clock. DDS is used in applications such as signal generation, local oscillators in communic ...
programmable electronics controlled by a
personal computer
A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tech ...
to make precisely reproducible sequences.
Open source pulse programming
There are several commercial pulse programmers available whose designs are proprietary. A notabl
open source pulse programmer systemwas originally designed by Paul Pham as part of his master's thesis at
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
under
Isaac Chuang
Isaac L. Chuang is an American electrical engineer and physicist. He leads the quanta research group at the Center for Ultracold Atoms at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received his undergraduate degrees in physics (1990) and elec ...
. It was first deployed in
Rainer Blatt
Rainer Blatt (born 8 September 1952) is a German-Austrian experimental physicist. His research centres on the areas of quantum optics and quantum information
Quantum information is the information of the state of a quantum system. It is the b ...
'
quantum optics and spectroscopy group{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051123151757/http://heart-c704.uibk.ac.at/index.html , date=2005-11-23 at the
University of Innsbruck
The University of Innsbruck (german: Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck; la, Universitas Leopoldino Franciscea) is a public research university in Innsbruck, the capital of the Austrian federal state of Tyrol, founded on October 15, 1669.
...
, and was later adopted by the following trapped ion research groups:
Tobias Schaetz's quantum analog simulation groupat the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, now at th
University of FreiburgPiet Schmidt's quantum metrology groupat the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), the German national standards body analogous to NIST in the United States.
Boris Blinov's ion trap groupat the University of Washington in Seattle
Hartmut Haeffner's ion trap groupat the University of California in Berkeley
Tilman Pfau's quantum optics groupat the University of Stuttgart
Andrew Drewson's ion trap groupat the University of Aarhus
Further extensions to the system were designed and implemented by Paul Pham while he resided at 419 Boylston in Seattle, with major contributions from Philipp Schindler at Innsbruck and Lutz Petersen at MPQ. As of 2010, the core part of the pulse programmer system (the FPGA sequencer board) is no longer being actively maintained. However, the Innsbruck group has designed and assembled its own custom DDS boards which generate the actual waveforms that is compatible with the FPGA sequencer board.
A new open source system called ARTIQ is being developed by
M-Labs
M-Labs (formerly known as the Milkymist project) is a company and community who develop, manufacture and sell advanced open hardware devices and software. It is known for the Milkymist system-on-chip (SoC) which is a commercialized system-on-chi ...
.
Quantum information science