English

Software-defined lock-in demodulator for low-frequency resistance noise measurements

Instrumentation and Detectors 2025-05-28 v2 Other Condensed Matter

Abstract

The resolution of low-frequency resistance noise measurements can be increased by amplitude modulation, shifting the spectrum of the resistance fluctuations away from the 1/f noise contributed by measurement instruments. However, commercial lock-in amplifiers used for de-modulating the fluctuations exhibit a problematic 1/f noise contribution, which imposes a hard lower limit on the relative resistance noise that can be detected. We replace the lock-in amplifier hardware by equivalent digital signal processing performed using open-source software and off-the-shelf data acquisition systems. Compared to previous implementations of the lock-in principle, our solution offers real-time preview capabilities and is resource-efficient for long acquisition times at high sampling rates. Importantly, compared to high-end commercial lock-in instruments, our system offers superior low-frequency noise performance with a reduction of the voltage power spectral density by about two orders of magnitude.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2412.00093,
  title  = {Software-defined lock-in demodulator for low-frequency resistance noise measurements},
  author = {Tim Thyzel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.00093},
  year   = {2025}
}