2013/10/31 by Peter P. Rohde, Keith R. Motes, Paul Knott +5 · 28 citations
Computer Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Mathematics #Optics #Photodetection #Photodetector #Physics #Quantum #Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum mechanics #Quantum optics #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #Quantum state #Sampling (signal processing) #Statistical physics #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.91.012342
published in Physical Review A 91(1) (American Physical Society) · 8 pages, 2 figures
arxiv created 2014/12/21 · openalex publication_date 2015/01/30 · arxiv updated 2015/04/10 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Boson sampling has been presented as a simplified model for linear optical quantum computing. In the boson-sampling model, Fock states are passed through a linear optics network and sampled via number-resolved photodetection. It has been shown that this sampling problem likely cannot be efficiently classically simulated. This raises the question as to whether there are other quantum states of light for which the equivalent sampling problem is also computationally hard. We present evidence, without using a full complexity proof, that a very broad class of quantum states of light---arbitrary superpositions of two or more coherent states---when evolved via passive linear optics and sampled with number-resolved photodetection, likely implements a classically hard sampling problem.