Noise-resilient phase estimation with randomized compiling

We develop an error mitigation method for the control-free phase estimation. We prove a theorem that under the first-order correction, the noise channels with only Hermitian Kraus operators do not change the phases of a unitary operator, and therefore, the benign types of noise for phase estimation are identified. By using the randomized compiling protocol, we can convert the generic noise in the phase estimation circuits into stochastic Pauli noise, which satisfies the condition of our theorem. Thus we achieve a noise-resilient phase estimation without any quantum resource overhead. The simulated experiments show that our method can significantly reduce the estimation error of the phases by up to two orders of magnitude. Our method paves the way for the utilization of quantum phase estimation before the advent of fault-tolerant quantum computers.Comment: 5 pages 4 figures, with the appendix; final version for publicatio

Experimental evidence to understand mechanical causes of retinal detachment following blunt trauma.

PURPOSE: This study aimed to perform an in vitro experiment to simulate retinal detachment caused by blunt impact, and provide experimental evidence to understand mechanical causes of traumatic retinal detachment. METHODS: The experiment was conducted on twenty-two fresh porcine eyes using a bespoke pendulum testing device at two energy levels (0.1J for low energy and 1.0J for high energy). We examined dynamic forces and mechanical responses to the impact, including global deformations, intraocular pressure changes and the energy absorption. Another set of twenty-two eyes underwent pathological examination immediately after being subjected to blunt impact. Twelve additional intact eyes were examined as controls. All pathological sections were scored to indicate whether retinal detachment had occurred. RESULTS: A dynamic variation in intraocular pressure was detected following impact and exhibited an approximate sinusoidal oscillation-attenuation profile. The peaks of impact force were 12.9 ± 1.9 N at low-energy level and 34.8 ± 9.8 N at high-energy level, showing a significant difference (p < 0.001). The positive and negative peaks of intraocular pressure were 149.4 ± 18.9 kPa and -10.9 ± 7.2 kPa at low-energy level, and 274.5 ± 55.2 kPa and -35.7 ± 23.7 kPa at high-energy level, showing significant differences (p < 0.001 for both levels). Retinal detachments were observed in damaged eyes while few detachments were found in control eyes. The occurrence rate of retinal detachment differed significantly (p < 0.05) between the high- and low-energy impact groups. CONCLUSIONS: This study provided experimental evidence that shockwaves produced by blunt trauma break the force equilibrium and lead to the oscillation and negative pressure, which mainly contribute to traumatic retinal detachment

CrossMoDA 2021 challenge: Benchmark of Cross-Modality Domain Adaptation techniques for Vestibular Schwannoma and Cochlea Segmentation

Domain Adaptation (DA) has recently raised strong interests in the medical imaging community. While a large variety of DA techniques has been proposed for image segmentation, most of these techniques have been validated either on private datasets or on small publicly available datasets. Moreover, these datasets mostly addressed single-class problems. To tackle these limitations, the Cross-Modality Domain Adaptation (crossMoDA) challenge was organised in conjunction with the 24th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI 2021). CrossMoDA is the first large and multi-class benchmark for unsupervised cross-modality DA. The challenge's goal is to segment two key brain structures involved in the follow-up and treatment planning of vestibular schwannoma (VS): the VS and the cochleas. Currently, the diagnosis and surveillance in patients with VS are performed using contrast-enhanced T1 (ceT1) MRI. However, there is growing interest in using non-contrast sequences such as high-resolution T2 (hrT2) MRI. Therefore, we created an unsupervised cross-modality segmentation benchmark. The training set provides annotated ceT1 (N=105) and unpaired non-annotated hrT2 (N=105). The aim was to automatically perform unilateral VS and bilateral cochlea segmentation on hrT2 as provided in the testing set (N=137). A total of 16 teams submitted their algorithm for the evaluation phase. The level of performance reached by the top-performing teams is strikingly high (best median Dice - VS:88.4%; Cochleas:85.7%) and close to full supervision (median Dice - VS:92.5%; Cochleas:87.7%). All top-performing methods made use of an image-to-image translation approach to transform the source-domain images into pseudo-target-domain images. A segmentation network was then trained using these generated images and the manual annotations provided for the source image.Comment: Submitted to Medical Image Analysi

Dissolution Behavior of Alumina-Based Inclusions in CaF2-Al2O3-CaO-MgO-SiO2 Slag Used for the Electroslag Metallurgy Process

Removal of non-metallic inclusions to CaF2-based slag is one of the most important functions of electroslag remelting. In this work, the dissolution behavior for alumina-based inclusions in CaF2-Al2O3-CaO-MgO-SiO2 slag has been investigated. Results indicate that the diffusion or permeability capacity of slag components into alumina particles is F−, Ca2+, Si4+, Mg2+, from strongest to weakest, for CaF2-Al2O3-CaO-MgO-SiO2 slag. Alumina inclusions react with F− in liquid slag at first and then react with CaO to form xCaO-yAl2O3 system. Subsequently, MgO substitutes for CaO to form a MgO-Al2O3 system layer surrounding the other product and reactant, and then enters the liquid slag. CaF2 can improve the dissolution capacity of slag to alumina inclusions. A complex region was formed between alumina-based particles and the slag, with different areas dominated by CaF2, CaO-Al2O3, CaO-SiO2 and MgO-Al2O3. The dissolution process of alumina particles in slag is different from the formation of compound inclusions originated from the Al-O deoxidization reaction

Exploration of Pyrolysis Behaviors of Waste Plastics (Polypropylene Plastic/Polyethylene Plastic/Polystyrene Plastic): Macro-Thermal Kinetics and Micro-Pyrolysis Mechanism

Pyrolysis is a promising technology used to recycle both the energy and chemicals in plastics. Three types of plastics, polyethylene plastic (PE), polypropylene plastic (PP) and polystyrene plastic (PS) were investigated using thermogravimetry–mass spectrometry (TG–MS) and reactive force field molecular dynamics (ReaxFF-MD) simulation. The thermogravimetric analysis showed that all three plastics lost weight during the pyrolysis in one step. The thermal decomposition stability is PS < PP < PE. The activation energies and reaction mechanism function of the three plastics were determined by the Kissinger and CR methods. Meanwhile, the ReaxFF-MD combined with density functional theory (DFT) was used to calculate the kinetics, as well as explore the pyrolysis mechanism. The calculated kinetic results agree well with the experimental methods. The common pyrolysis reaction process follows the dissociation sequence of the polymer to polymeric monomer and, then, to the gas molecules. Based on the bond length between the monomers and the bond dissociation energy for different plastics, the required energy for polymer dissociation is PS < PP < PE, which microscopically explains the macro-activation energy sequence and thermal stability. Moreover, due to the retention of aromatic rings in its monomers, PS almost completely converts into oil

Dissolution Behavior of Alumina-Based Inclusions in CaF2-Al2O3-CaO-MgO-SiO2 Slag Used for the Electroslag Metallurgy Process

Removal of non-metallic inclusions to CaF2-based slag is one of the most important functions of electroslag remelting. In this work, the dissolution behavior for alumina-based inclusions in CaF2-Al2O3-CaO-MgO-SiO2 slag has been investigated. Results indicate that the diffusion or permeability capacity of slag components into alumina particles is F−, Ca2+, Si4+, Mg2+, from strongest to weakest, for CaF2-Al2O3-CaO-MgO-SiO2 slag. Alumina inclusions react with F− in liquid slag at first and then react with CaO to form xCaO-yAl2O3 system. Subsequently, MgO substitutes for CaO to form a MgO-Al2O3 system layer surrounding the other product and reactant, and then enters the liquid slag. CaF2 can improve the dissolution capacity of slag to alumina inclusions. A complex region was formed between alumina-based particles and the slag, with different areas dominated by CaF2, CaO-Al2O3, CaO-SiO2 and MgO-Al2O3. The dissolution process of alumina particles in slag is different from the formation of compound inclusions originated from the Al-O deoxidization reaction

Benchmarking universal quantum gates via channel spectrum

Abstract Noise remains the major obstacle to scalable quantum computation. Quantum benchmarking provides key information on noise properties and is an important step for developing more advanced quantum processors. However, current benchmarking methods are either limited to a specific subset of quantum gates or cannot directly describe the performance of the individual target gate. To overcome these limitations, we propose channel spectrum benchmarking (CSB), a method to infer the noise properties of the target gate, including process fidelity, stochastic fidelity, and some unitary parameters, from the eigenvalues of its noisy channel. Our CSB method is insensitive to state-preparation and measurement errors, and importantly, can benchmark universal gates and is scalable to many-qubit systems. Unlike standard randomized schemes, CSB can provide direct noise information for both target native gates and circuit fragments, allowing benchmarking and calibration of global entangling gates and frequently used modules in quantum algorithms like Trotterized Hamiltonian evolution operator in quantum simulation