A certification scheme for the boson sampler

TL;DR

This paper proposes a certification scheme to reliably distinguish genuine boson sampling devices from classical imposters, addressing a key challenge in verifying quantum computational advantage in linear optics experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel certification protocol that can differentiate boson sampling from mean-field sampling for any random scattering matrix, improving verification methods.

Findings

The scheme effectively distinguishes boson sampling from mean-field sampling.

Numerical analysis shows robustness against imperfect input states.

The protocol works for any scattering matrix chosen via Haar measure.

Abstract

Boson sampling can provide strong evidence that the computational power of a quantum computer outperforms a classical one via currently feasible linear optics experiments. However, how to identify an actual boson sampling device against any classical computing imposters is an ambiguous problem due to the computational complexity class in which boson sampling lies. The certification protocol based on bosonic bunching fails to rule out the so-called mean-field sampling. We propose a certification scheme to distinguish the boson sampling from the mean-field sampling for any random scattering matrices chosen via the Harr-measure. We numerically analyze our scheme and the influence of imperfect input states caused by non-simultaneous arrival photons.