24 research outputs found
The impetus theory in judgments about object motion: A new perspective
Several tendencies found in explicit judgments about object motion have been interpreted as evidence that people possess a naive theory of impetus. The theory states that objects that are caused to move by other objects acquire force that determines the kind of motion exhibited by the object, and that this force gradually dissipates over time. I argue that the findings can better be understood as manifestations of a general understanding of externally caused motion based on experiences of acting on objects. Experiences of acting on objects yield the idea that properties of the cause of motion are transmitted to the effect object. This idea functions as a heuristic for explicit predictions of object motion under conditions of uncertainty. This accounts not only for the findings taken as evidence for the impetus theory, but also for several findings that fall outside the scope of the impetus theory. It has also been claimed that judgments about the location at which a moving object disappeared are influenced by the impetus theory. I argue that these judgments are better explained in a different way, as best-guess extrapolations made by the visual system as a practical guide to interactions with the object, such as interception
Coherent long-distance displacement of individual electron spins
Controlling nanocircuits at the single electron spin level is a possible
route for large-scale quantum information processing. In this context,
individual electron spins have been identified as versatile quantum information
carriers to interconnect different nodes of a spin-based semiconductor quantum
circuit. Despite important experimental efforts to control the electron
displacement over long distances, keeping the electron spin coherence after
transfer remained up to now elusive. Here we demonstrate that individual
electron spins can be displaced coherently over a distance of 5 micrometers.
This displacement is realized on a closed path made of three tunnel-coupled
lateral quantum dots. Using fast quantum dot control, the electrons tunnel from
one dot to another at a speed approaching 100 m/s. We find that the spin
coherence length is 8 times longer than expected from the electron spin
coherence without displacement. Such an enhanced spin coherence points at a
process similar to motional narrowing observed in nuclear magnetic resonance
experiments6. The demonstrated coherent displacement will enable long-range
interaction between distant spin-qubits and will open the route towards
non-abelian and holonomic manipulation of a single electron spin.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures, supplementary material