163 research outputs found
Contrast Dependence of Smooth Pursuit Eye Movements following a Saccade to Superimposed Targets
Dorsal stream areas provide motion information used by the oculomotor system to generate pursuit eye movements. Neurons in these areas saturate at low levels of luminance contrast. We therefore hypothesized that during the early phase of pursuit, eye velocity would exhibit an oculomotor gain function that saturates at low luminance contrast. To test this, we recorded eye movements in two macaques trained to saccade to an aperture in which a pattern of dots moved left or right. Shortly after the end of the saccade, the eyes followed the direction of motion with an oculomotor gain that increased with contrast before saturating. The addition of a second pattern of dots, moving in the opposite direction and superimposed on the first, resulted in a rightward shift of the contrast-dependent oculomotor gain function. The magnitude of this shift increased with the contrast of the second pattern of dots. Motion was nulled when the two patterns were equal in contrast. Next, we varied contrast over time. Contrast differences that disappeared before saccade onset biased post-saccadic eye movements at short latency. Changes in contrast occurring during or after saccade termination did not influence eye movements for approximately 150 ms. Earlier studies found that eye movements can be explained by a vector average computation when both targets are equal in contrast. We suggest that this averaging computation may reflect a special case of divisive normalization, yielding saturating contrast response functions that shift to the right with opposed motion, averaging motions when targets are equated in contrast
Oculomotor feature discrimination is cortically mediated
Eye movements are often directed toward stimuli with specific features. Decades of neurophysiological research has determined that this behavior is subserved by a feature-reweighting of the neural activation encoding potential eye movements. Despite the considerable body of research examining feature-based target selection, no comprehensive theoretical account of the feature-reweighting mechanism has yet been proposed. Given that such a theory is fundamental to our understanding of the nature of oculomotor processing, we propose an oculomotor feature-reweighting mechanism here. We first summarize the considerable anatomical and functional evidence suggesting that oculomotor substrates that encode potential eye movements rely on the visual cortices for feature information. Next, we highlight the results from our recent behavioral experiments demonstrating that feature information manifests in the oculomotor system in order of featural complexity, regardless of whether the feature information is task-relevant. Based on the available evidence, we propose an oculomotor feature-reweighting mechanism whereby (1) visual information is projected into the oculomotor system only after a visual representation manifests in the highest stage of the cortical visual processing hierarchy necessary to represent the relevant features and (2) these dynamically recruited cortical module(s) then perform feature discrimination via shifting neural feature representations, while also maintaining parity between the feature representations in cortical and oculomotor substrates by dynamically reweighting oculomotor vectors. Finally, we discuss how our behavioral experiments may extend to other areas in vision science and its possible clinical applications
Deterministic protocol for mapping a qubit to coherent state superpositions in a cavity
We introduce a new gate that transfers an arbitrary state of a qubit into a
superposition of two quasi-orthogonal coherent states of a cavity mode, with
opposite phases. This qcMAP gate is based on conditional qubit and cavity
operations exploiting the energy level dispersive shifts, in the regime where
they are much stronger than the cavity and qubit linewidths. The generation of
multi-component superpositions of quasi-orthogonal coherent states, non-local
entangled states of two resonators and multi-qubit GHZ states can be
efficiently achieved by this gate
Hardware-efficient autonomous quantum error correction
We propose a new method to autonomously correct for errors of a logical qubit
induced by energy relaxation. This scheme encodes the logical qubit as a
multi-component superposition of coherent states in a harmonic oscillator, more
specifically a cavity mode. The sequences of encoding, decoding and correction
operations employ the non-linearity provided by a single physical qubit coupled
to the cavity. We layout in detail how to implement these operations in a
practical system. This proposal directly addresses the task of building a
hardware-efficient and technically realizable quantum memory.Comment: 12 pages,6 figure
Dynamically protected cat-qubits: a new paradigm for universal quantum computation
We present a new hardware-efficient paradigm for universal quantum
computation which is based on encoding, protecting and manipulating quantum
information in a quantum harmonic oscillator. This proposal exploits
multi-photon driven dissipative processes to encode quantum information in
logical bases composed of Schr\"odinger cat states. More precisely, we consider
two schemes. In a first scheme, a two-photon driven dissipative process is used
to stabilize a logical qubit basis of two-component Schr\"odinger cat states.
While such a scheme ensures a protection of the logical qubit against the
photon dephasing errors, the prominent error channel of single-photon loss
induces bit-flip type errors that cannot be corrected. Therefore, we consider a
second scheme based on a four-photon driven dissipative process which leads to
the choice of four-component Schr\"odinger cat states as the logical qubit.
Such a logical qubit can be protected against single-photon loss by continuous
photon number parity measurements. Next, applying some specific Hamiltonians,
we provide a set of universal quantum gates on the encoded qubits of each of
the two schemes. In particular, we illustrate how these operations can be
rendered fault-tolerant with respect to various decoherence channels of
participating quantum systems. Finally, we also propose experimental schemes
based on quantum superconducting circuits and inspired by methods used in
Josephson parametric amplification, which should allow to achieve these driven
dissipative processes along with the Hamiltonians ensuring the universal
operations in an efficient manner.Comment: 28 pages, 11 figure
Persistent control of a superconducting qubit by stroboscopic measurement feedback
Making a system state follow a prescribed trajectory despite fluctuations and
errors commonly consists in monitoring an observable (temperature,
blood-glucose level...) and reacting on its controllers (heater power, insulin
amount ...). In the quantum domain, there is a change of paradigm in feedback
since measurements modify the state of the system, most dramatically when the
trajectory goes through superpositions of measurement eigenstates. Here, we
demonstrate the stabilization of an arbitrary trajectory of a superconducting
qubit by measurement based feedback. The protocol benefits from the long
coherence time (s) of the 3D transmon qubit, the high efficiency
(82%) of the phase preserving Josephson amplifier, and fast electronics
ensuring less than 500 ns delay. At discrete time intervals, the state of the
qubit is measured and corrected in case an error is detected. For Rabi
oscillations, where the discrete measurements occur when the qubit is supposed
to be in the measurement pointer states, we demonstrate an average fidelity of
85% to the targeted trajectory. For Ramsey oscillations, which does not go
through pointer states, the average fidelity reaches 75%. Incidentally, we
demonstrate a fast reset protocol allowing to cool a 3D transmon qubit down to
0.6% in the excited state.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures and 1 table. Supplementary information available
as an ancilla fil
Attentional selection of superimposed surfaces cannot be explained by modulation of the gain of color channels
AbstractWhen two differently colored, superimposed patterns of dots rotate in opposite directions, this yields the percept of two superimposed transparent surfaces. If observers are cued to attend to one set of dots, they are impaired in making judgments about the other set. Since the two sets of dots are overlapping, the cueing effect cannot be explained by spatial attention. This has led to the interpretation that the impairment reflects surface-based attentional selection. However, recent single-unit recording studies in monkeys have found that attention can modulate the gain of neurons tuned for features such as color. Thus, rather than reflecting the selection of a surface, the behavioral effects might simply reflect a reduction in the gain of color channels selective for the color of the uncued set of dots (feature-based attention), as if viewing the surfaces through a colored filter. If so, then the impairment should be eliminated when the two surfaces are made the same color. Instead, we find that the impairment persists with no reduction in strength. Our findings thus rule out the color gain explanation
Demonstrating Quantum Error Correction that Extends the Lifetime of Quantum Information
The remarkable discovery of Quantum Error Correction (QEC), which can
overcome the errors experienced by a bit of quantum information (qubit), was a
critical advance that gives hope for eventually realizing practical quantum
computers. In principle, a system that implements QEC can actually pass a
"break-even" point and preserve quantum information for longer than the
lifetime of its constituent parts. Reaching the break-even point, however, has
thus far remained an outstanding and challenging goal. Several previous works
have demonstrated elements of QEC in NMR, ions, nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers,
photons, and superconducting transmons. However, these works primarily
illustrate the signatures or scaling properties of QEC codes rather than test
the capacity of the system to extend the lifetime of quantum information over
time. Here we demonstrate a QEC system that reaches the break-even point by
suppressing the natural errors due to energy loss for a qubit logically encoded
in superpositions of coherent states, or cat states of a superconducting
resonator. Moreover, the experiment implements a full QEC protocol by using
real-time feedback to encode, monitor naturally occurring errors, decode, and
correct. As measured by full process tomography, the enhanced lifetime of the
encoded information is 320 microseconds without any post-selection. This is 20
times greater than that of the system's transmon, over twice as long as an
uncorrected logical encoding, and 10% longer than the highest quality element
of the system (the resonator's 0, 1 Fock states). Our results illustrate the
power of novel, hardware efficient qubit encodings over traditional QEC
schemes. Furthermore, they advance the field of experimental error correction
from confirming the basic concepts to exploring the metrics that drive system
performance and the challenges in implementing a fault-tolerant system
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