boson sampling

Recent progress on quantum random sampling protocols such as random circuit sampling (interacting) and boson sampling (non-interacting) demonstrate an advantage of quantum information processing. Is there an intermediately interacting regime where the random sampling becomes intractable in a classical setting and becomes feasible on a quantum device? We found that such an intermediately interacting regime could be feasibly utilized by a generalization of current boson sampling protocols.

State-of-the-art quantum devices are not yet large enough to be called full-scale computers. The biggest comprise just a few dozen qubits—a meager count compared to the billions of bits in an ordinary computer’s memory. But steady progress means that these machines now routinely string together 10 or 20 qubits and may soon hold sway over 100 or more. In the meantime, researchers are busy dreaming up uses for small quantum computers and mapping out the landscape of problems they’ll be suited to solving. A paper by researchers from the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) and the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science (QuICS), published recently in Physical Review Letters, argues that a novel non-quantum perspective may help sketch the boundaries of this landscape and potentially even reveal new physics in future experiments.