Acquisition details#

This page describes important Qblox-specific behaviour of the TriggerCount, Timetag, TimetagTrace, Trace and ThresholdedTriggerCount acquisition protocols. Explanations of the protocols themselves can be found in Acquisition protocols and detailed usage examples can be found in the Tutorial: Acquisitions tutorials.

Duration#

On all Qblox modules, the actual duration of the trigger count, timetag and timetag-trace acquisitions is 4 ns shorter than the duration specified upon creating the operation. For example, a TriggerCount(port="q0:res", clock="q0.ro", duration=1e-6) will acquire data for 996 ns, but the operation will occupy 1 µs of schedule time. The start time of the actual acquisition is the same as the start time of the operation.

Bin modes and module support#

Not all acquisitions work with all bin modes or module types. The table below lists exactly what is supported for the TriggerCount, Timetag, TimetagTrace, Trace and ThresholdedTriggerCount acquisitions.

For more information about the bin modes, please see the tutorials and reference guide.

Protocol Support modules Supported bin modes
TriggerCount QRM BinMode.APPEND, BinMode.DISTRIBUTION, BinMode.SUM
QTM BinMode.APPEND, BinMode.SUM
Timetag QTM BinMode.APPEND, BinMode.AVERAGE
TimetagTrace QTM BinMode.APPEND
Trace QRM, QRM-RF BinMode.AVERAGE
QTM BinMode.FIRST
ThresholdedTriggerCount QRM, QTM BinMode.APPEND