A Statistical Benchmark for BosonSampling

TL;DR

This paper introduces a statistical benchmark for BosonSampling experiments, enabling verification that experimental data genuinely reflects many-boson interference rather than other particle types or noise, thus supporting quantum advantage claims.

Contribution

It proposes a new, classically computable statistical signature to certify BosonSampling experiments as genuine many-boson interference.

Findings

The benchmark distinguishes bosons from fermions and distinguishable particles.

It provides a practical method for experimental validation of BosonSampling.

The approach enhances confidence in quantum computational supremacy demonstrations.

Abstract

Computing the state of a quantum mechanical many-body system composed of indistinguishable particles distributed over a multitude of modes is one of the paradigmatic test cases of computational complexity theory: Beyond well-understood quantum statistical effects, the coherent superposition of many-particle amplitudes rapidly overburdens classical computing devices - essentially by creating extremely complicated interference patterns, which also challenge experimental resolution. With the advent of controlled many-particle interference experiments, optical set-ups that can efficiently probe many-boson wave functions - baptised BosonSamplers - have therefore been proposed as efficient quantum simulators which outperform any classical computing device, and thereby challenge the extended Church-Turing thesis, one of the fundamental dogmas of computer science. However, as in all experimental quantum simulations of truly complex systems, there remains one crucial problem: How to certify that a given experimental measurement record is an unambiguous result of sampling bosons rather than fermions or distinguishable particles, or of uncontrolled noise? In this contribution, we describe a statistical signature of many-body quantum interference, which can be used as an experimental (and classically computable) benchmark for BosonSampling.