Second generation readout for large format photon counting microwave kinetic inductance detectors
Abstract
We present the development of a second generation digital readout system for photon counting microwave kinetic inductance detector (MKID) arrays operating in the optical and near-infrared wavelength bands. Our system retains much of the core signal processing architecture from the first generation system but with a significantly higher bandwidth, enabling the readout of kilopixel MKID arrays. Each set of readout boards is capable of reading out 1024 MKID pixels multiplexed over 2 GHz of bandwidth; two such units can be placed in parallel to read out a full 2048 pixel microwave feedline over a 4 GHz–8 GHz band. As in the first generation readout, our system is capable of identifying, analyzing, and recording photon detection events in real time with a time resolution of order a few microseconds. Here, we describe the hardware and firmware, and present an analysis of the noise properties of the system. We also present a novel algorithm for efficiently suppressing IQ mixer sidebands to below −30 dBc.
Additional Information
© 2020. Published under license by AIP Publishing. Submitted: 14 September 2020 • Accepted: 12 November 2020 • Published Online: 10 December 2020. The authors would like to thank Jonas Zmuidzinas for valuable feedback regarding the phase noise calculations. N.F. was supported by a grant from the Heising-Simons Foundation. N.Z. was supported throughout this work by a NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship. I.L. was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. 1650114. This work was funded, in part, by NSF ATI Grant No. AST-1308556 and U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics Contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11359 w/Fermi Research Alliance, LLC. We would also like to thank Xilinx for donating the FPGAs used for this research. DATA AVAILABILITY. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. All of our array calibration and control software, as well as the Virtex-6 firmware, is open source and can be found at https://github.com/MazinLab/MKIDReadout.Attached Files
Published - 5.0029457.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 107314
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20210104-164232438
- Heising-Simons Foundation
- NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship
- DGE-1650114
- NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
- AST-1308556
- NSF
- DE-AC02-07CH11359
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- Created
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2021-01-05Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-12-01Created from EPrint's last_modified field