Company Blog

Chiral 1D edge states of the quantum anomalous Hall effect can be used as “optical fibers” for electrons. To gain a deeper understanding of their properties, the dispersion relation and the attenuation of edge excitations in the microwave regime can be investigated. In this blog post, we present measurements that were performed in the lab of Prof. Bocquillon using our SHFLI 8.5 GHz Lock-in Amplifier.

In this tutorial, we learned how to use lock-in amplifiers and optimize measurement parameters to get the best signal-to-noise ratio. We discussed three common use cases: optics and photonics experiments, material characterization, and resonator characterization. Finally, we looked at more advanced techniques, such as double modulation and multi-frequency measurements.

Any measurement resolution is limited by random fluctuations, "noise", of the measured quantities. Practical systems also might experience variations of parameters causing "drifts" in the measurements. Various sources of such noises and drifts may take different time or frequency dependencies. To understand how such fluctuations affect one's measurement, a careful analysis of such noise and drifts must be performed. Discrimination of such noise sources might be performed by performing Allan deviation measurement of discretely sample data. In this blog post, we discuss how to easily measure Allan variance with our Zurich Instruments lock-in amplifier.

Today, lock-in amplifiers are widespread instruments used to measure small signals buried in noise. Thanks to their versatility, they can be tailored to different experiments and address a large variety of applications...

Timing is extremely important to correlate the results from different experimental signals. In this blog post we will show how to work with timestamps from a Zurich Instruments lock-in amplifier when measuring multiple signals simultaneously.

This blog post accompanies the online launch event of the GHFLI and SHFLI Lock-in Amplifiers, the trailblazers that bring state-of-the-art signal generation, analysis, and control to microwaves. Watch the recording and read the transcript of the Q&A to learn about the innovations brought by these new instruments and how they can help researchers and engineers.

Spectral characterization of signals and systems is required in a broad range of applications in physics and engineering. Analyzing a signal in the frequency domain reveals valuable information about the signal behavior which is not necessarily obtainable from its time-domain analysis...

Proper noise characterization is essential in many applications, especially when dealing with tiny signals buried in noise like in nanotechnology, photonics and quantum physics. Noise characteristics of a system are often represented by the noise spectral density in amplitude or power mode, the latter being called power spectral density (PSD), within the frequency range of interest...