Scaling of boson sampling experiments

Abstract

Boson sampling is the problem of generating a multiphoton state whose counting probability is the permanent of an n×n matrix. This is created as the output n-photon coincidence rate of a prototype quantum computing device with n input photons. It is a fundamental challenge to verify boson sampling, and therefore the question of how output count rates scale with matrix size n is crucial. Here we apply results from random matrix theory as well as the characteristic function approach from quantum optics to establish analytical scaling laws for average count rates. We treat boson sampling experiments with arbitrary inputs, outputs, and losses. Using the scaling laws we analyze grouping of channe..