We present characterization of a lock-in amplifier based on a field programmable gate array capable of demodulation at up to 50 MHz. The system exhibits 90 nV/sqrt(Hz) of input noise at an optimum demodulation frequency of 500 kHz.The passband has a full-width half-maximum of 2.6 kHz for modulation frequencies above 100 kHz. Our code is opensource and operates on a commercially available platform.
We describe a general purpose digital servo optimized for feedback control of lasers in atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics experiments. The servo is capable of feedback bandwidths up to roughly 1~MHz (limited by the 320~ns total latency); loop filter shapes up to fifth order; multiple-input, multiple-output control; and automatic lock acquisition. The configuration of the servo is controlled via a graphical user interface, which also provides a rudimentary software oscilloscope and tools for measurement of system transfer functions. We illustrate the functionality of the digital servo by describing its use in two example scenarios: frequency control of the laser used to probe the narrow clock transition of $^{27}$Al$^+$ in an optical atomic clock, and length control of a cavity used for resonant frequency doubling of a laser.
This letter presents principles and applications of a virtual multi-channel lock-in amplifier that is a simple but effective method to recover small ac signal from noise with high presison. The fundamentals of this method are based on calculation of cross-correlation function. Via this method, we successfully built up a magnetoelectric measurement system which can perform precise and versatile measurements without any analog lock-in amplifier. Using the virtual multi-channel lock-in amplifier, the output of the magnetoelectric measurement system is extensively rich in magnetoelectric coupling behaviors, including coupling strength and phase lag, under various dc bias magnetic field and ac magnetic field.
Achieving high-precision detection of time-dependent signals in noisy environment is a ubiquitous issue in physics and a critical task in metrology. Lock-in amplifiers are detectors that can extract alternating signals with a known carrier frequency from an extremely noisy environment. Here, we present a protocol for achieving an entanglement-enhanced lock-in amplifier via empoying many-body quantum interferometry and periodic multiple pulses. Generally, quantum interferometry includes three stages: initialization, interrogation, and readout. The many-body quantum lock-in amplifier can be achieved via adding suitable periodic multiple-$pi$-pulse sequence during the interrogation. Our analytical results show that, by selecting suitable input states and readout operations, the frequency and amplitude of an unknown alternating field can be simultaneously extracted via population measurements. In particular, if we input spin cat states and apply interaction-based readout operations, the measurement precisions for frequency and amplitude can both approach the Heisenberg limit. Moreover, our many-body quantum amplifier is robust against extreme stochastic noises. Our study may point out a new direction for measuring time-dependent signals with many-body quantum systems, and provides a feasible way for achieving Heisenberg-limited detection of alternating signals.
Due to the instruments non-trivial resolution function, measurements on triple-axis spectrometers require extra care from the experimenter in order to obtain optimal results and to avoid unwanted spurious artefacts. We present a free and open-source software system that aims to ease many of the tasks encountered during the planning phase, in the execution and in data treatment of experiments performed on neutron triple-axis spectrometers. The software is currently in use and has been successfully tested at the MLZ, but can be configured to work with other triple-axis instruments and instrument control systems.
In this work we present NJOY+NCrystal, a tool to generate thermal neutron scattering libraries with support for coherent and incoherent elastic components for crystalline solid materials. This tool, which is a customized version of NJOY, was created by modifying the nuclear data processing program NJOY to call the thermal scattering software library NCrystal, and includes a proposed change in the ENDF-6 format to store both the coherent and incoherent elastic components. Necessary changes to enable this format in NJOY, as well as to sample it in the OpenMC Monte Carlo code, are detailed here. Examples of materials that are coherent-dominant, incoherent-dominant, and mixed elastic scatterers are presented, as well as the creation of novel libraries for MgH$_2$ and MgD$_2$, that are under consideration as advanced neutron reflectors in the HighNESS project at the European Spallation Source. NJOY+NCrystal simplifies greatly the process to generate thermal scattering libraries (TSL) and this is exemplified with 213 new and updated TSL evaluations.