Scalable boson sampling with a single-photon device

TL;DR

This paper presents a scalable boson sampling architecture using a solid-state single-photon source, demonstrating three and four photon experiments, and discusses potential scalability to over 20 photons to challenge classical computational limits.

Contribution

The authors introduce a scalable boson sampling setup with high-quality solid-state single-photon sources and a programmable loop network, enabling multi-photon experiments and paving the way for larger quantum advantage demonstrations.

Findings

Successfully implemented boson sampling with 3 and 4 photons.

Demonstrated high efficiency, purity, and indistinguishability of single photons.

Discussed potential to scale up to >20 photons for quantum advantage.

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.