Post-selection in noisy Gaussian boson sampling: part is better than whole

TL;DR

This paper introduces a post-selection method to mitigate photon loss in Gaussian boson sampling, improving the reliability of quantum advantage demonstrations without hardware changes.

Contribution

The authors propose a practical post-selection technique that enhances Gaussian boson sampling performance by discarding low-quality data, aiding quantum advantage verification.

Findings

Post-selection can turn a failing GBS experiment into a successful one.

Method improves robustness of current GBS devices against photon loss.

Potentially benefits development of GBS-based quantum algorithms.

Abstract

Gaussian boson sampling is originally proposed to show quantum advantage with quantum linear optical elements. Recently, several experimental breakthroughs based on Gaussian boson sampling pointing to quantum computing supremacy have been presented. However, due to technical limitations, the outcomes of Gaussian boson sampling devices are influenced severely by photon loss. Here, we present an efficient and practical method to reduce the negative effect caused by photon loss. With no hardware modifications, our method takes the data post-selection process that discards low-quality data according to our criterion to improve the performance of the final computational results, say part is better than whole. As an example, we show that the post-selection method can turn a GBS experiment that would otherwise fail in a ``non-classical test" into one that can pass that test. Besides improving the robustness of computation results of current GBS devices, this photon loss mitigation method may also benefit the further development of GBS-based quantum algorithms.