Abstract

The Red Pitaya [1] is an affordable (< 250 Euros) field-programmable gate array (FPGA) board with fast analog inputs and outputs (sampled at 125 MHz). This makes it useful for quantum optics experiments, in particular as a digital feedback controller for analog systems. Based on the open source software provided by the board manufacturer, we have created the software package PyRPL [2] (Python RedPitaya Lockbox) which implements many devices that are needed for optics experiments with the Red Pitaya. The user interface and all high-level functionalities are written in Python, but an essential part of the software is contained in a custom FPGA design written in the hardware description language (HDL) Verilog.

© 2017 IEEE