Company Blog

Speeding up NV Center Measurements with Real-time Control

21.08.2023

Experiment conceptual diagram

Real-time feedback control can often speed up quantum experiments, increase fidelity, or enable new methods. One example is adaptive sensing and characterization, which uses feedback to minimize the number of measurements needed to estimate a given quantity. Our customers in the group of Prof. Cristian Bonato at Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh, Scotland) have recently demonstrated this method on an NV-center based spin qubit and achieved an increase in speed by up to an order of magnitude compared to non-adaptive approaches in the estimation of qubit decoherence timescales.

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Subsampling Techniques for Achieving Waveform Precision in Picoseconds

11.11.2022

Oscilloscope image HDAWG subsampling

An arbitrary waveform generator (AWG) can generate pulses with a timing resolution much finer than its sampling period. Users are often unaware of this capability, yet it enables highly precise timing control in application use cases such as NV center dynamical decoupling, flux pulse width control, AWG channel deskew, and IQ mixer calibration...

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How Double-Superheterodyne Compares with IQ Mixing in Qubit Experiments

08.11.2022

arXiv

Were you ever curious about how the double-superheterodyne frequency conversion compares with IQ mixing when tested on real qubits? This blog post introduces such a comparison published in a recent preprint paper by the ETH QuDev lab. One of its main results hints at double-superheterodyne enabling a higher gate fidelity and lower state leakage rate than a standard IQ mixing approach!

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Synchronizing Multiple AWG Channels

09.09.2022

Pulse sheet

Does your application require multiple AWG channels with precise and stable timing synchronization? In this blog post, we will show how to achieve this with the HDAWG Arbitrary Waveform Generator for setup sizes ranging from few channels up to 144. We demonstrate 3 methods suitable for different use cases.

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Five Tips to Boost Your Qubit Measurements

07.06.2022

Speedup of QCCS

When operating qubits, speed and high system utilization are key to achieving rapid progress. In this blog post, you’ll find a collection of five important tips to optimize the throughput of your Zurich Instruments Quantum Computing Control System (QCCS) and perform measurements faster than ever!

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Why You Should Use the SHFQC for Few-Qubit Measurements

03.06.2022

Two-qubit setup based on SHFQC

It all starts with a few qubits: a masterfully engineered few-qubit system forms the groundwork for advances in large-scale quantum computers. This blog post gives you our 5 top reasons why you should base your few-qubit setup on the Zurich Instruments SHFQC Qubit Controller.

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Efficient Generation of Dynamic Pulses

08.09.2021

Rabi Cyclic

Solid-state qubits are typically characterized and operated by a series of very short pulses. To achieve a high-fidelity control, it is necessary to generate many sequences of them, with very accurate timing. In this blog post, I will show how to use the advanced feature set of the HDAWG Arbitrary...

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Randomized Benchmarking in Seconds

20.05.2021

Random Benchmarking Sequence

Randomized benchmarking (RB) is a widely used tool in quantum information science to determine qubit fidelity and to characterize individual qubit gates. It is also an excellent example of a quantum experiment with advanced requirements on the control hardware and software. For an RB experiment, we apply random sequences of...

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The Next Generation of Signal Generators - SHFSG Launch Event

05.05.2021

SHFSG Launch Event

On April 29th, Jan Benhelm, Mark Kasperczyk and I welcomed a crowd of customers to the interactive online event introducing Zurich Instruments’ newest product, the SHFSG Signal Generator. Our aim was to present multiple perspectives on the launch of this powerful instrument. Jan provided an overview of Zurich Instruments’ quantum...

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Practical Active Qubit Reset

05.03.2021

Active Qubit Reset Setup

When working with qubits, it’s essential to have a reliable state preparation. The easiest method for superconducting qubits is to passively wait for the qubit to decay into its ground state, but it’s slow and has poor fidelity. Active qubit reset decreases considerably the initialization time, while greatly increasing the...

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Automating IQ Mixer Calibration on the HDIQ

03.02.2021

LO Leakage

As a crucial step in the bring-up of superconducting experiments, IQ mixer calibration normally requires multiple instruments from different parties and manual cabling work. This blog post describes how to use the Zurich Instruments HDIQ, HDAWG and UHFQA (or other UHF instruments) to automate IQ mixer calibration and: Simplify the...

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How to Generate QAM Signaling with the HDAWG

25.11.2019

QAM Signalling

Digital modulation is extensively used in telecommunications, radar systems and quantum technologies. Corresponding to every analog modulation technique, i.e., amplitude modulation (AM), phase modulation (PM) and frequency modulation (FM), there is a digital version of signal modulation...

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AWG Precompensation for High-Fidelity CZ Gates in Transmon Qubits

02.11.2019

Noise feature of HDAWG 5V range

High quantum gate fidelity is essential for all quantum hardware platforms. Temporal sensitivity to flux noise and flux pulse distortion can pose major limitations to achieving high fidelity with repeatable two-qubit gates in transmon qubits. In a recent publication, Rol and collaborators demonstrated a fast (40 ns), low-leakage (0.1%), high-fidelity...

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Are Your Parametric Two-Qubit Gates Limited by the Driving AWG?

13.09.2019

HDAWG Noise Floor

If you are using the Zurich Instruments HDAWG, the answer is no. Let's see why. Parametrically modulated superconducting qubit gates (parametric gates) are usually accomplished by RF-modulation – typically several hundred MHz – of the flux through a mediating coupler element or qubit. Usually, many dBm of signal power are...

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Generation of Single-Sideband Modulation by Arbitrary Waveform Generators

15.12.2017

SSB modulation Scheme

Introduction I/Q modulations are extensively used in a variety of applications including telecommunications, quantum computing (QC), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy and band-excitation atomic force microscopy (AFM). In this post, we demonstrate how to generate such signals using arbitrary waveform generators from Zurich Instruments with an...

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