Scalable boson sampling with a single-photon device

Understand

Boson sampling is a problem intractable for classical computers, but can be naturally solved on a specialized photonic quantum simulator which requires less resources than building a universal quantum computer.

• The biggest challenge to implement boson sampling with a large number of photons has been the lack of reliable single-photon sources.
• Here we demonstrate a scalable architecture of boson sampling using a solid-state single-photon source with simultaneously high efficiency, purity, and indistinguishability.
• The single photons are time-bin encoded and interfered in an electrically programmable loop-based network.