Pulse specifications

In a measurement, a PulseSequence is composed of Pulses. Each of these Pulses can either be untargeted (generic) or targeted (specific to a connection and interface). The user is supposed to write untargeted pulses, which then are converted to targeted pulses through the Layout. Currently, the Layout tries to match each Pulse to a specific connection by searching through the available interfaces and their PulseImplementations. However, there are situations where you want a pulse to be directed to a specific connection, in which case the Layout fails. A solution is proposed in Layout targeting specifications, where each Pulse has an associated environment and connection_label. An environment is a dictionary stored in the config, which contains among others a dictionary of connection_label: connection pairs. This way, a pulse gets sent to a specific connection depending on the environment it is using.

You can think of the environment as something that gives context to the pulse from which the pulse can gather environment-specific information and properties.

Desired attributes

name

The name of a Pulse is a unique identifier that is used to select the Pulse from a PulseSequence. If the name contains a dot (.), this denotes that the pulse is in a nested PulseSequence. In this case the form is ‘{PulseSequence}.{Pulse}’

label(s)

Measurements often share common pulses (such as a read pulse). These pulses should share common properties, meaning that changing the property globally should change it for all instances. This is done by linking Pulses to the config. A Pulse can retrieve its properties from the config, and changing the value in the config is reflected in all related pulses. A label can be used to specify where in the config a pulse should retrieve its properties from. For instance, a pulse with label ‘pi’ should retrieve the frequency, duration, and amplitude of a pi-pulse. There could potentially be multiple labels attached, in which case properties from multiple parts of the config can be used. However, this may make things more complicated.

environment

The environment of a Pulse defines where the Pulse can retrieve certain properties from. Examples are the connection it should be targeted to (defined in connection_attribute), and properties such as its frequency. The environment is defined in the config.

connection_label

The connection_label is a label that is a key in the environment’s connections, along with an associated connection value. This connection is a direct representation of a connection defined in the Layout. This way, each Pulse has a connection_label. Depending on the environment, this Pulse gets sent to a certain connection.

Open questions

How should a Pulse retrieve properties from the config?

Something along the lines of a label should be used to link a Pulse with a set of properties defined in the config. An example is a read pulse, which should retrieve the duration and voltage level of a read pulse. However, there are more complicated cases where a single label might not be sufficient.