Software & Open Source

Tools, pipelines, and instruments developed by Mazin Lab

Mazin Lab develops and releases open-source software alongside our instruments and detector research. Our tools span readout firmware, data reduction pipelines, instrument simulators, and hardware drivers.

Interactive Tools

Supercalc — Superconducting Properties Calculator

A design console for superconducting thin films and the microresonators built from them. Enter any three of critical temperature (Tc), resistivity, film thickness, and sheet inductance, and constraint propagation solves for the fourth, then computes surface impedance (Zmuidzinas 2012), sheet resistance, kinetic inductance fraction, quality factor, and Mattis–Bardeen response. A density-of-states module inverts measured single-photon pulse heights to recover the single-spin N₀, and an interactive periodic table catalogs elemental superconductors with their ambient-pressure Tc and resistivity. Built for MKID and microresonator design.

Try it: Supercalc | GitHub: MazinLab/Supercalc

Reference: Zmuidzinas 2012, Annu. Rev. Condens. Matter Phys. 3, 169; Zobrist et al. 2019; Szypryt et al. 2017.

Cryogenic Flex Cable Heat Load Calculator

A web-based tool for computing thermal conduction heat loads in flexible coaxial cables at cryogenic temperatures (0.1–300 K). Supports coaxial and ribbon cable geometries with material thermal conductivity data from NIST and Lakeshore references.

Try it: FlaxHeatLoadCalc | GitHub: MazinLab/FlaxHeatLoadCalc

Reference: Smith et al. 2024, IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity.

Herriott Cell Calculator

A requirements-driven design console for optical delay lines built from Herriott and nested (“modified”) Herriott multipass cells. Enter target delay, delay resolution, cell length, mirror diameter, wavelength, reflectivity, and beam waist, and the tool searches feasible mirror geometries with ray-trace verification, then visualizes spot patterns, delay combs, transmission, and mirror schematics.

Try it: HerriottCellCalc | GitHub: MazinLab/HerriottCellCalc

Reference: Ou et al. 2023, Optics Express; Guo et al. 2026, APL Photonics.

Cryostat Window IR Blocking Calculator

A radiative-transfer tool for estimating the thermal infrared background that reaches a detector pixel through a multi-stage cryogenic filter stack. Model a 300 K blackbody source radiating through progressively colder stages (e.g. 65 K, 4 K, 800 mK), with per-stage control over temperature, aperture diameter, stage spacing, substrate, and coating. Each stage is treated as a graybody attenuated by the colder filters downstream, with cold-stop geometry setting the solid angle onto the pixel. A transfer-matrix multilayer designer synthesizes Ta₂O₅/SiO₂ filter stacks, and the tool plots photon flux per wavelength alongside the integrated counts per second on the detector.

Try it: IRBlocking | GitHub: MazinLab/IRBlocking

Readout & Firmware

MKIDGen3 Readout Firmware

RFSoC-based readout system for 2,048+ MKID channels per board. Replaces the previous ROACH2-based Gen2 system with a 5× reduction in weight and power and a 10× reduction in cost per pixel. Fully open-source and designed for future megapixel arrays and space deployment.

GitHub: MazinLab/MKIDReadout | MazinLab/MKIDGen3

Published: Smith et al. 2024. arXiv:2406.09764

RFSoC Oversampled Polyphase Filter Bank

A high-throughput oversampled polyphase filter bank (OPFB) implemented on Xilinx RFSoC, designed for channelizing the MKID readout signal. Uses HLS and PYNQ for rapid prototyping.

GitHub: MazinLab/RFSoC_OPFB

Data Reduction & Analysis

MKID Science Data Pipeline

A general-purpose data reduction pipeline for UVOIR MKID data from ground-based instruments. Handles photon list processing, wavelength calibration, flat-fielding, cosmic ray rejection, and output to science-ready data products. Used as the primary pipeline for MEC and XKID.

GitHub: MazinLab/MKIDPipeline

MKID Speckle Control

Focal plane wavefront sensing and speckle control with MKIDs. Interfaces with the CACAO deformable mirror system for real-time starlight suppression on coronagraphic instruments like MEC and SCExAO.

GitHub: MazinLab/MKIDSpeckleControl

Simulators

MEDIS — MKID Exoplanet Direct Imaging Simulator

An end-to-end simulator for MKID-based high-contrast imaging instruments. MEDIS propagates light through a model atmosphere, telescope, AO system, and coronagraph to simulate the photon-counting data stream, enabling performance predictions and observing strategy optimization.

GitHub: MazinLab/MEDIS

MOMOS Simulator

The instrument simulator and data reduction package for the Multi-Object MKID Optical Spectrometer. Enables end-to-end simulation of MOMOS observations including spectral rebinning and time-resolved spectroscopy.

GitHub: MazinLab/MOMOSpecSim

Published: Kim et al. 2025, Astronomical Journal.

Instrument Control

FROST — Fridge Remote Operations, Status & Thermometry

A Rust-based system for remote monitoring and control of dilution refrigerators. Provides real-time temperature readouts, heater control, and operational status for cryogenic instrumentation.

GitHub: MazinLab/FROST

Hardware Drivers

Python and Rust drivers for lab equipment used across our cryogenic systems:

  • lakeshore-python — Lake Shore temperature controllers and instruments
  • jpe — JPE piezo cryogenic positioning stages (Rust)
  • cryomech_driver — Cryomech compressor monitoring and control
  • python-FLI — Finger Lakes Instrumentation camera bindings

All of our software is available on GitHub.