Case Study: RIKEN achieves low-latency qubit stabilization and saves months of development time with Keysight AWGs and PathWave FPGA

Modular instruments with hardware programmable processing accelerate the quest for Quantum computing

RIKEN’s Quantum Functional System Research Group, led by Dr. Takashi Nakajima, faced the challenge of detecting and stabilizing the tiny charge of a single electron in a quantum dot to create a reliable qubit. Their charge sensors were highly noise-sensitive and required synchronized, real-time PID control aligned with qubit control pulses. To address this, they worked with Keysight, using Keysight modular arbitrary waveform generators (AWGs), digitizers, and PathWave FPGA to provide high-speed pulse control and in-hardware processing.

Keysight delivered a hardware-in-the-loop solution by programming the AWG’s onboard FPGA with Verilog and Keysight’s PathWave FPGA so PID routines run deterministically with ultra-low latency alongside qubit signals; the setup also supports mixing IP and adding a digital down converter in Keysight digitizers for future work. The Keysight approach accelerated deployment—Dr. Nakajima estimates it saved months of development time—enabled stabilized charge sensing for longer computations, and positioned the team to scale toward multi-qubit experiments.

RIKEN

Takashi Nakajima

Senior Research Scientist