Boson Sampling with 20 Input Photons and a 60-Mode Interferometer in a 10^{14}-Dimensional Hilbert Space

Area of Science:

• Quantum computing
• Quantum optics
• Photonic systems

Background:

• Boson sampling is a key quantum computing task.
• Previous experiments were limited by small numbers of photons (up to 5).
• Scaling quantum experiments is crucial for demonstrating quantum advantage.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop solid-state sources for highly efficient, pure, and indistinguishable single photons.
• To integrate ultralow-loss optical circuits in 3D.
• To perform boson sampling experiments with a significantly larger number of photons.

Main Methods:

• Development of advanced solid-state single-photon sources.
• 3D integration of ultralow-loss optical circuits.
• Execution of boson sampling with 20 single photons in a 60-mode interferometer.

Main Results:

• Detection of up to 14 photons at the output.
• Sampling over Hilbert spaces up to 3.7×10^14, a >10 order of magnitude increase.
• Validation against distinguishable and uniform samplers with 99.9% confidence.

Conclusions:

• This work enables genuine quantum sampling regimes impossible for classical computation.
• The developed technology paves the way for larger-scale quantum advantage demonstrations.
• The findings represent a significant leap in experimental quantum computing capabilities.