Keshet Aviv, Ketterle Wolfgang
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Physics, Research Laboratory of Electronics, MIT/Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, 77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
Rev Sci Instrum. 2013 Jan;84(1):015105. doi: 10.1063/1.4773536.
Atomic physics experiments often require a complex sequence of precisely timed computer controlled events. This paper describes a distributed graphical user interface-based control system designed with such experiments in mind, which makes use of off-the-shelf output hardware from National Instruments. The software makes use of a client-server separation between a user interface for sequence design and a set of output hardware servers. Output hardware servers are designed to use standard National Instruments output cards, but the client-server nature should allow this to be extended to other output hardware. Output sequences running on multiple servers and output cards can be synchronized using a shared clock. By using a field programmable gate array-generated variable frequency clock, redundant buffers can be dramatically shortened, and a time resolution of 100 ns achieved over effectively arbitrary sequence lengths.
原子物理实验通常需要一系列复杂的、精确计时的计算机控制事件。本文描述了一种基于分布式图形用户界面的控制系统，该系统在设计时考虑了此类实验，它使用了美国国家仪器公司现成的输出硬件。该软件在序列设计的用户界面和一组输出硬件服务器之间采用了客户端-服务器分离模式。输出硬件服务器设计为使用标准的美国国家仪器公司输出卡，但客户端-服务器的特性应允许将其扩展到其他输出硬件。运行在多个服务器和输出卡上的输出序列可以使用共享时钟进行同步。通过使用现场可编程门阵列生成的可变频率时钟，可以显著缩短冗余缓冲区，并在有效任意序列长度上实现100纳秒的时间分辨率。
