Speaker
Description
Many modern astronomy instruments are now using superconducting detector technologies due to the advantageous properties of low-temperature superconducting materials. The very small superconducting bandgaps of some metals allows photon counting and energy resolving capabilities in wavebands spanning near/mid-infrared to X-ray, and time-integration measurements in the far-infrared, sub-millimetre, and CMB wavebands. The complexity of most readout electronics systems for large arrays of superconducting detectors often requires powerful and expensive processors such as FPGAs, CPUs, and/or GPUs. However, during prototyping stages of detector development, it is often sufficient to readout single pixels/channels at any one time.
In this paper we present an RF homodyne readout system based on the Red Pitaya educational FPGA board. The system is designed to readout prototype MKID (microwave kinetic inductance detector) pixels designed for UVOIR astronomy and astrophysics. The very affordable and easily programmable system was built with off-the-shelf-components including an IQ mixer and bench-top programmable LO, and is programmed with python.
Full characterisation of the system components will be presented, and results will be shown for the system during operation as a readout for prototype optical/near-IR MKIDs. The system can operate in frequency domain ‘sweep mode’, to search or trace the resonance of an MKID resonator in amplitude, phase, and IQ data formats. The system can easily be switched to time domain ‘pulse mode’, which can be used to monitor a single pixel for photon events. A summary of the system design and performance will be presented, along with some science data recorded with the system.
