Spot the Difference: Distinguishing Boson Sampling Experiments from Classical Simulations

Anonymous

S. N. van den Hoven, Edwin Kanis, Jelmer Jan Renema

Alexandra E. Moylett, Raúl García−Patrón, Jelmer J Renema +1 more

Abstract Boson sampling is the problem of sampling from the same distribution as indistinguishable single photons at the output of a linear optical interferometer. It is an example of a non-universal quantum computation which is believed to be feasible in the near term and cannot be simulated on a classical machine. Like all purported demonstrations of ‘quantum computational supremacy’, this motivates optimising classical simulation schemes for a realistic model of the problem, in this case boson sampling when the implementations experience lost or distinguishable photons. Although current simulation schemes for sufficiently imperfect boson sampling are classically efficient, in principle the polynomial runtime can be infeasibly large. In this work, we develop a scheme for classical simulation of boson sampling under uniform distinguishability and loss, based on the idea of sampling from distributions where at most k photons are indistinguishable. We show that asymptotically this scheme can provide a polynomial improvement in the runtime compared to classically simulating idealised boson sampling. More significantly, we show that in the regime considered experimentally relevant, our approach gives an substantial improvement in runtime over other classical simulation approaches.

Youri Cherif, Verena Yacoub, Ulysse Chabaud +2 more

Max Tillmann, Borivoje Dakić, René Heilmann +3 more

S. N. van den Hoven, E. Kanis, Jelmer J. Renema

Boson sampling is one of the leading protocols for demonstrating a quantum advantage, but the theory of how this protocol responds to noise is still incomplete. We extend the theory of classical simulation of boson sampling with partial distinguishability to the case where the degree of indistinguishability between photon pairs is different between different pairs.