SLAC Microresonator RF (SMuRF) Electronics: A tone-tracking readout system for superconducting microwave resonator arrays

Abstract

We describe the newest generation of the SLAC Microresonator RF (SMuRF) electronics, a warm digital control and readout system for microwave-frequency resonator-based cryogenic detector and multiplexer systems such as microwave SQUID multiplexers ($\mu$mux) or microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs). Ultra-sensitive measurements in particle physics and astronomy increasingly rely on large arrays of cryogenic sensors, which in turn necessitate highly multiplexed readout and accompanying room-temperature electronics. Microwave-frequency resonators are a popular tool for cryogenic multiplexing, with the potential to multiplex thousands of detector channels on one readout line. The SMuRF system provides the capability for reading out up to 3328 channels across a 4-8 GHz bandwidth. Notably, the SMuRF system is unique in its implementation of a closed-loop tone-tracking algorithm that minimizes RF power transmitted to the cold amplifier, substantially relaxing system linearity requirements and effective noise from intermodulation products. Here we present a description of the hardware, firmware, and software systems of the SMuRF electronics, comparing achieved performance with science-driven design requirements. We focus in particular on the case of large channel count, low bandwidth applications, but the system has been easily reconfigured for high bandwidth applications. The system described here has been successfully deployed in lab settings and field sites around the world and is baselined for use on upcoming large-scale observatories.

arXiv comment28 pages, 25 figures, + references. Comments welcome!

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• The Superconducting Quasiparticle-Amplifying Transmon: A Qubit-Based Sensor for meV Scale Phonons and Single THz Photons
• Improved microwave SQUID multiplexer readout using a kinetic-inductance traveling-wave parametric amplifier
• Crosstalk effects in microwave SQUID multiplexed TES bolometer readout
• Demonstration of a 1820 channel multiplexer for transition-edge sensor bolometers
• The Simons Observatory: Studies of Detector Yield and Readout Noise From the First Large-Scale Deployment of Microwave Multiplexing at the Large Aperture Telescope
• The Simons Observatory: Design, Optimization, and Performance of Low Frequency Detectors
• The Simons Observatory: Large-Scale Characterization of 90/150 GHz TES Detector Modules
• The Simons Observatory: Dark Characterization of the Large Aperture Telescope
• The Simons Observatory: Design, Integration, and Current Status of Small Aperture Telescopes
• The Simons Observatory: Studies of Phase Drift in RF Transmission Lines from the First Large-Scale Deployment of Microwave Frequency Multiplexing for Cosmology