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arXiv · 1603.04127

Scalable boson sampling with a single-photon device

Abstract

Boson sampling is a problem intractable for classical computers, but can be naturally solved on a specialized photonic quantum simulator which requires less resources than building a universal quantum computer. The biggest challenge to implement boson sampling with a large number of photons has been the lack of reliable single-photon sources. Here we demonstrate a scalable architecture of boson sampling using a solid-state single-photon source with simultaneously high efficiency, purity, and indistinguishability. The single photons are time-bin encoded and interfered in an electrically programmable loop-based network. We implement and validate boson sampling with input three and four single photons, and track the dynamical multi-photon evolution inside the circuit. With further refinement of the system efficiency, our approach may be feasible to be scaled up to >20-boson sampling to outperform classical computers, and thus provide experimental evidence against the Extended Church-Turing Thesis.

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Yu He, Zu-En Su, He-Liang Huang, Xing Ding, Jian Qin, Can Wang, S. Unsleber, Chao Chen, Hui Wang, Yu-Ming He, Xi-Lin Wang, Christian Schneider, Martin Kamp, Sven Höfling, Chao-Yang Lu, Jian-Wei Pan. 2016-03-22. Scalable boson sampling with a single-photon device. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.118.190501

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