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arXiv:2509.04550 · Physical Review A

Measuring multiparticle indistinguishability with the generalized bunching probability

Shawn Geller, Emanuel H. Knill

Published Feb 3, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

The indistinguishability of many bosons undergoing passive linear transformations followed by number basis measurements is fully characterized by the visible state of the bosons. However, measuring all the parameters in the visible state is experimentally demanding. In this work, we seek to perform partial characterization of the visible state by measuring properties of it that are available after randomization. First we study the case where the occupied visible modes are randomly permuted, and second we study the case where Haar random linear optical unitaries are applied. In each case, we find that the generalized bunching probability -- which is the probability that all the input bosons arrive in a given subset of the output modes -- obeys monotonicity with respect to some partial order of distinguishability of the input bosons. As an intermediate result, we show that Lieb's permanental-dominance conjecture for immanants is equivalent to the following statement: for states that are invariant under permutations of the occupied visible modes, the generalized bunching probability is maximized when the bosons are perfectly indistinguishable. We also prove that a consequence of the monotonicity of the generalized bunching probability after Haar averaging is that this average is maximized when the bosons are perfectly indistinguishable. Finally, we discuss applications of our results to thermometry of cold-atom systems.

DOI
10.1103/1x5l-jd26

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The indistinguishability of many bosons undergoing passive linear transformations followed by number basis measurements is fully characterized by the visible state of the bosons. However, measuring all the parameters in the visible state is experimentally demanding. In this work, we seek to perform partial characterization of the visible state by measuring properties of it that are available after randomization. First we study the case where the occupied visible modes are randomly permuted, and second we study the case where Haar random linear optical unitaries are applied. In each case, we find that the generalized bunching probability -- which is the probability that all the input bosons arrive in a given subset of the output modes -- obeys monotonicity with respect to some partial order of distinguishability of the input bosons. As an intermediate result, we show that Lieb's permanental-dominance conjecture for immanants is equivalent to the following statement: for states that are invariant under permutations of the occupied visible modes, the generalized bunching probability is maximized when the bosons are perfectly indistinguishable. We also prove that a consequence of the monotonicity of the generalized bunching probability after Haar averaging is that this average is maximized when the bosons are perfectly indistinguishable. Finally, we discuss applications of our results to thermometry of cold-atom systems.
Boson sampling is the task of producing samples from the number-basis distribution of many bosons traveling through a passive linear optical network. It is believed to be extremely difficult to accomplish classically, and has been the motivation for many "quantum advantage" demonstrations. Here we discuss the characterization tools that were developed to interpret the results of a boson sampling experiment performed at JILA, using atoms instead of photons. We measured the indistinguishability of the atoms using a Hong-Ou-Mandel style measurement, and found that it was 99.5−1.6+0.5%99.5^{+0.5}_{-1.6}\%99.5−1.6+0.5​%. We then showed that the indistinguishability of the atoms was a good predictor of the multiparticle bunching features, which in turn was a measure of multiparticle indistinguishability itself. To make this latter connection explicit, we introduce the weak generalized bunching conjecture and show it is equivalent to an existing mathematical conjecture. For the purpose of characterizing the dynamics that were present in the experiment, we discuss how to optimize the experimental design for inferring the single-particle unitary from Fock basis measurements. We showed that having very cold atoms was necessary to perform the inference of the dynamics in a reasonable amount of time. We then partially characterized the single particle unitary via direct measurements using one and two atoms, and compared our measurements to a separate characterization using a new statistic that describes the deviation between the two characterization methods while being insensitive to uninferable parameters.
Using tools from quantum information theory, we present a general theory of indistinguishability of identical bosons in experiments consisting of passive linear optics followed by particle number detection. Our results do neither rely on additional assumptions on the input state of the interferometer, such as, for instance, a fixed mode occupation, nor on any assumption on the degrees of freedom that potentially make the particles distinguishable. We identify the expectation value of the projector onto the N-particle symmetric subspace as an operationally meaningful measure of indistinguishability, and derive tight lower bounds on it that can be efficiently measured in experiments. Moreover, we present a consistent definition of perfect distinguishability and characterize the corresponding set of states. In particular, we show that these states are diagonal in the computational basis up to a permutationally invariant unitary. Moreover, we find that convex combinations of states that describe partially distinguishable and perfectly indistinguishable particles can lead to perfect distinguishability, which itself is not preserved under convex combinations.
Anomalous bunching is a paradoxical quantum interferometric phenomenon in which partially distinguishable photons exhibit a higher probability of bunching into two or more modes than fully indistinguishable photons [Nat. Photonics 17, 702 (2023)]. While this effect is directly linked to violations of certain conjectures on matrix permanents, the mechanism underlying the anomaly is not yet fully understood. Here, we show that boson bunching is governed not by internal indistinguishability alone, but by the total indistinguishability of the postselected output state. Total indistinguishability combines the internal degrees of freedom, such as polarization or arrival time, with the spatial degrees of freedom of their wave functions restricted to the measured output modes of the interferometer. This reformulation preserves the expected connection between boson bunching and total indistinguishability, while clarifying how anomalous bunching can arise. It also reveals several additional facets of the same phenomenon, which are captured within a unified framework. In particular, we exhibit situations in which adding an independent source of distinguishability, either internal or spatial, can enhance multimode or even single-mode bunching probabilities, offering new insights into the subtle role of distinguishability in multiphoton interference.
We propose a scalable and efficient \textit{in situ} method for assessing the multiparticle indistinguishability of identical bosons or fermions in quantum interference experiments on linear interferometers by harnessing quantum parallelism and the bunching/anti-bunching tendencies of these particles. The proposed certification method can be applied to any generic linear interferometer. For particles occupying distinct input ports of a Haar-random unitary interferometer, the number of experimental runs required to attain a prescribed statistical precision is polynomial in the number of particles, the interferometer size, and the inverse precision, with high probability. Our method is robust under losses: for uniform particle losses, the polynomial scaling is preserved when the inverse single-particle survival probability is polynomially bounded. Our scheme is especially suitable for certifying the indistinguishability of single photons in large-scale interference experiments, such as Boson Sampling in the regime of quantum advantage over classical computation.
The conjecture that the multi-mode bunching probability is always maximized by indistinguishable bosons was recently disproven. In light of this development, we analytically investigate conditions under which partially distinguishable bosons can exhibit enhanced multi-mode bunching compared to indistinguishable ones. We establish the frameworks of the first and second quantization formalism as well as the Schur-Weyl formalism to describe the states and the evolution of many-particle systems consisting of partially distinguishable bosons, and derive a general expression for the multi-mode bunching probability. The analysis of a recent counterexample to the generalized bunching conjecture reveals that a specific symmetry between internal states and the single-particle time-evolution operator can lead to higher multi-mode bunching probabilities of partially distinguishable particles as compared to indistinguishable ones. We identify the structural requirements on the internal states and the interferometer necessary to construct such scenarios. Building on the Schur-Weyl formalism, we provide conditions for enhanced bunching probabilities of partially distinguishable particles and introduce a class of unitary transformations that forbid single-mode bunching and may create advantageous settings for lowering the multi-mode bunching probability of indistinguishable particles. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of multi-mode bunching and suggest symmetry-based conditions under which it may be enhanced by partial distinguishability. As such, they offer promising directions for future research toward a systematic theory of bosonic multi-mode bunching.
We investigate indistinguishability of identical bosons and fermions undergoing arbitrary particle-number-preserving evolutions of their visible degrees of freedom. For the projective indistinguishability measure, defined by the projection of the visible state onto the symmetric/anti-symmetric subspace, we derive an equivalent expression in terms of the dynamically invariant internal state. We further generalize the textbook symmetrization/anti-symmetrization framework for bosons and fermions to arbitrary partial distinguishability by deriving an explicit reconstruction formula for the multiparticle visible state in terms of the indistinguishability function encoding the dynamical invariants. We give complete characterization of the class-functions of indistinguishability by projective measures on generalized symmetries. Finally, we reveal a strikingly counterintuitive effect: introducing additional particle label states can increase the multiparticle indistinguishability of identical particles. The effect originates from the cancellation of collective multiparticle phases.