FPGA-based electronic system for the control and readout of superconducting quantum processors

• Published in: Review of scientific instruments 2022-07, Vol.93 (7), p.074701-074701
• Main Authors: Yang, Yuchen, Shen, Zhongtao, Zhu, Xing, Wang, Ziqi, Zhang, Gengyan, Zhou, Jingwei, Jiang, Xun, Deng, Chunqing, Liu, Shubin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Circuits; Control systems; Demodulation; Digital signal processing; Electronic systems; Feedback; Feedforward control; Field programmable gate arrays; Firmware; Low noise; Microprocessors; Processors; Programming languages; Quadratures; Quantum phenomena; Qubits (quantum computing); Real time; Scientific apparatus & instruments; Signal processing; Superconductivity; Synchronism; Time dependence; Waveforms
• ISSN: 0034-6748; 1089-7623
• DOI: 10.1063/5.0085467

Electronic systems for qubit control and measurement serve as a bridge between quantum programming language and quantum information processors. With the rapid development of superconducting quantum circuit technology, synchronization in a large-scale system, low-latency execution, and low noise are required for electronic systems. Here, we present a field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based electronic system with a distributed synchronous clock and trigger architecture. The system supports synchronous control of qubits with jitters of ∼5 ps. We implement a real-time digital signal processing system in the FPGA, enabling precise timing control, arbitrary waveform generation, in-phase and quadrature demodulation for qubit state discrimination, and the generation of real-time qubit-state-dependent trigger signals for feedback/feedforward control. The hardware and firmware low-latency design reduces the feedback/feedforward latency of the electronic system to 125 ns, significantly less than the decoherence times of the qubit. Finally, we demonstrate the functionalities and low-noise performance of this system using a fluxonium quantum processor.