Microcontroller interrupts for flexible control of time critical tasks in experiments with laser cooled atoms

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how microcontroller timer interrupts can be effectively used for precise, flexible control in laser cooling experiments, offering advantages over traditional commercial solutions.

Contribution

It introduces a low-overhead frequency locking scheme and a multichannel sequencer using microcontroller timer interrupts for accurate timing in laser-cooling experiments.

Findings

Achieved accurate timing with low overhead using timer interrupts.

Developed a flexible multichannel experimental sequencer.

Compared microcontroller solutions favorably to commercial timing systems.

Abstract

I detail applications of timer interrupts in a popular micro-controller family to time critical applications in laser-cooling type experiments. I demonstrate a low overhead 1-bit frequency locking scheme and a multichannel experimental sequencer using the timer-counter intterrupts to achieve accurate timing along with flexible interfaces. The general purpose nature of micro-controllers can offer unique functionality compared with commercial solutions due to the flexibility of a computer controlled interface without the poor latencies associated with computer timing.