Microwave Boson Sampling

TL;DR

This paper proposes a microwave photon-based approach to boson sampling, leveraging superconducting devices for scalable, flexible, and efficient quantum optical network simulations, advancing toward practical quantum advantage.

Contribution

It introduces a novel microwave photon implementation of boson sampling, overcoming optical limitations and enabling scalable, flexible quantum optical experiments with superconducting technology.

Findings

Microwave boson sampling offers scalable implementation prospects.

Superconducting devices enable flexible state preparation.

Efficient photon-number measurements improve experimental feasibility.

Abstract

The first post-classical computation will most probably be performed not on a universal quantum computer, but rather on a dedicated quantum hardware. A strong candidate for achieving this is represented by the task of sampling from the output distribution of linear quantum optical networks. This problem, known as boson sampling, has recently been shown to be intractable for any classical computer, but it is naturally carried out by running the corresponding experiment. However, only small scale realizations of boson sampling experiments have been demonstrated to date. Their main limitation is related to the non-deterministic state preparation and inefficient measurement step. Here, we propose an alternative setup to implement boson sampling that is based on microwave photons and not on optical photons. The certified scalability of superconducting devices indicates that this direction is promising for a large-scale implementation of boson sampling and allows for more flexible features like arbitrary state preparation and efficient photon-number measurements.