Detailed, interpretable characterization of mid-circuit measurement on a transmon qubit

arXiv (Cornell University) · 2026-02-03

Mid-circuit measurements (MCMs) are critical components of the quantum error correction protocols expected to enable utility-scale quantum computing. MCMs can be modeled by quantum instruments (a type of quantum operation or process), which can be characterized self-consistently using gate set tomography. However, experimentally estimated quantum instruments are often hard to interpret or relate to device physics. We address this challenge by adapting the error generator formalism -- previously used to interpret noisy quantum gates by decomposing their error processes into physically meaningful sums of "elementary errors" -- to MCMs. We deploy our new analysis on a transmon qubit device to tease out and quantify error mechanisms including amplitude damping, readout error, and imperfect collapse. We examine in detail how the magnitudes of these errors vary with the readout pulse amplitude, recover the key features of dispersive readout predicted by theory, and show that these features can be modeled parsimoniously using a reduced model with just a few parameters.

Bureaucracy from the Bottom Up: Diviners in Qing Local Governance

Journal of Chinese History · 2025-06-24 · 1 citations

Abstract This article examines professional diviners employed by the Qing (1636–1912) government to assist in local administration. Known as yin-yang officers, these officials served among the technical and religious specialists embedded in prefectural and county governments across the empire. Although they held marginal or unranked positions within the formal bureaucracy, yin-yang officers played a vital role in both administrative and ritual life at the grassroots level. By tracing their training, sources of authority, and everyday responsibilities, this article sheds light on the Qing’s local technical and religious bureaucracy—an often-overlooked dimension of imperial statecraft that bridged ritual, cosmological knowledge, healing and divination, and official governance. It argues for the importance of examining imperial bureaucracy from below, showing how these unsalaried, low-level figures helped sustain the empire’s overstretched administrative apparatus well into the early twentieth century.

Pronouns in English: a user’s guide

Nature Reviews Urology · 2025-05-20 · 1 citations

The Fox Spirit, the Stone Maiden, and Other Transgender Histories From Late Imperial China

Gender & History · 2025-06-09

Conventions in the text

Princeton University Press eBooks · 2024-02-06

all indexing numbers from the Nanchong Municipal Archive (hereafter Nanbu County Qing Archive) are written in the following tripartite convention: "Section Number.File Number.Document Number."For example, in "7.720.01,"7 refers to the Guangxu reign, 720 is the file number, and 01 is the first document in the case file.Indexing numbers for the Langzhong Municipal Archive, the Nanbu County Archive, Sichuan University's China Southwest Bibliography Research Center (hereafter SUCSBRC), the Sichuan Provincial Archives (hereafter Ba County Qing Archive), the First Historical Archives of China, Taiwan's National Palace Museum Palace Memorial and Grand Council Archive, Taiwan's Academia Sinica's Archive of the Grand Secretariat, and the Institute of Modern History Archives, Academia Sinica follow the labeling conventions of each institution.I transcribe Chinese names and terms in Hanyu pinyin according to Standard Mandarin pronunciation, except for words and phrases from Taiwan.In Chinese, family names (xing) are not surnames since they precede the personal name, but I retain surname for clarity.I provide the birth and death dates for eminent persons whenever pos si ble and use "d.u." to denote "dates unknown." Northern Sichuan is capitalized throughout the text since the term refers to a Qing administrative unit: the Northern Sichuan Cir cuit (Chuanbei dao).While alternatives like "topomancy" or "topographic siting" have their merits as translations for the word fengshui, I have retained "[Chinese] geomancy" as it has been the most common rendering in English.As will be made clear in the following pages, "fengshui" was just one Chinese term for geomantic beliefs and practices, and it was not always the most preferred in the imperial era.Other terms include dili, kanyu, budi, dizhan, dixue, zhanzhai, zedi, xiangzhai, and yinyang jia yan.For readability, I generally use "fengshui" or "geomancy" throughout the chapters but draw attention to the alternatives mentioned above when relevant.The imperial lunisolar calendar divided the year into twelve months, with the new moon falling on the first of each lunar month and the full moon appearing on the fifteenth.For ease of reading, all dates in the main text are

From <i>Fenye</i> to <i>Fengshui</i> : Applying Correlative Cosmography in Late Imperial China

HoST - Journal of History of Science and Technology · 2024-06-01 · 3 citations

Abstract This paper documents the resilience of fenye (分野, lit., “field allocation”) and its applications through the nineteenth century in China. Despite literati (and eventually imperial) criticisms that the fenye system of correlative cosmography was outdated and unworthy of belief, fenye retained a sizeable audience through the close of the Qing period. At the top, the Qing imperial state continued to reference fenye correlations in its official communications late into the dynasty. In local society, literati looked to newly issued dynastic sources of astrological knowledge to update local gazetteers; in the nineteenth century, these trends were pronounced along frontier areas lacking longstanding gazetteer records. Finally, people engaged in the practice of fengshui looked to fenye knowledge to update the values and layout of the compass, the historical origins of which related to geomantic practices. In the Qing period, the compass was both theoretically and physically altered under the influence of Jesuit-introduced “Western Learning” ( Xixue 西學). The paper contends that the status of fenye in pre-twentieth century China was seldom an allor-nothing proposition between a celebrated component of imperial orthodoxy and an outdated relic in inexorable decline: people critiqued fenye , used fenye , and updated fenye .

Introduction: Empire under the Night Sky: Recording Astral-Cosmography in Qing Dynasty China, 17th – 19th Centuries

HoST - Journal of History of Science and Technology · 2024 · 4 citations

• Ancient history
• History
• Art

thematic dossierAstral science (the study of celestial objects) and cosmography (the study of the dynamic interactions among the Heavens, the Earth, and the human realm), loom large in the global history of science.With the northern hemisphere sharing more or less one night sky, the transregional circulation of astral-cosmographic knowledge was a central vehicle of scientific exchange through the early modern eras among the Western, Islamic, African, and Asian cultural spheres.Whether conveyed by Arab polymaths, South Asian merchants, or Jesuit missionaries, astro-cosmographic knowledge was readily translatable and transmutable. 1It was also politically consequential.Through these centuries of continuous cultural exchange, one aspect of Chinese astralcosmography proved remarkably resilient: the fenye 分野 system.Fenye (translated alternatively as "field allocation" or "allocated fields") is a heaven-earth correspondence system that correlated constellations with discreet geographic regions of the Chinese empire.Theories surrounding fenye correlations emerged between the eighth to third centuries BCE for uses in political 1 Dror Weil, "Chinese-Muslims as Agents of Astral Knowledge in Late Imperial China," in

Qing administrative units for the interior lands ( “china” )

Princeton University Press eBooks · 2024-02-06

qi ng a dm i n i st r at i v e u n i ts for t h e i n t e r ior l a n ds ( "c h i na" )Eighteen provinces (sheng) were divided into cir cuits (dao).Cir cuits were divided into prefectures ( fu), independent departments (zhili zhou), and independent subprefectures (zhili ting).Prefectures were divided into counties (xian), departments (zhou), and subprefectures (ting).

Tarikh i-Hamidi: A Late Qing Uyghur History By Musa Sayrami. Translated by Eric Schluessel. New York: Columbia University Press, 2023. 520 pp. $140.00 (cloth), $35.00 (paper), $34.99 *eBook

Journal of Chinese History · 2024-11-13