Boson Sampling with Single-Photon Fock States from a Bright Solid-State Source

J C Loredo; M A Broome; P Hilaire; O Gazzano; I Sagnes; A Lemaitre; M P Almeida; P Senellart; A G White

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.130503

Boson Sampling with Single-Photon Fock States from a Bright Solid-State Source

Phys Rev Lett. 2017 Mar 31;118(13):130503. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.130503. Epub 2017 Mar 28.

Authors

J C Loredo¹, M A Broome², P Hilaire^{3

4}, O Gazzano^{3

5}, I Sagnes³, A Lemaitre³, M P Almeida¹, P Senellart^{3

6}, A G White¹

Affiliations

¹ Centre for Engineered Quantum Systems, Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology, School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia.
² Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology, School of Physics, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales 2052, Australia.
³ CNRS-C2N Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies, Université Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, 91460 Marcoussis, France.
⁴ Université Paris Diderot-Paris 7, 75205 Paris CEDEX 13, France.
⁵ Joint Quantum Institute, National Institute of Standards and Technology, University of Maryland, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899, USA.
⁶ Département de Physique, Ecole Polytechnique, Université Paris-Saclay, F-91128 Palaiseau, France.

PMID: 28409950
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.130503

Abstract

A boson-sampling device is a quantum machine expected to perform tasks intractable for a classical computer, yet requiring minimal nonclassical resources as compared to full-scale quantum computers. Photonic implementations to date employed sources based on inefficient processes that only simulate heralded single-photon statistics when strongly reducing emission probabilities. Boson sampling with only single-photon input has thus never been realized. Here, we report on a boson-sampling device operated with a bright solid-state source of single-photon Fock states with high photon-number purity: the emission from an efficient and deterministic quantum dot-micropillar system is demultiplexed into three partially indistinguishable single photons, with a single-photon purity 1-g^{(2)}(0) of 0.990±0.001, interfering in a linear optics network. Our demultiplexed source is between 1 and 2 orders of magnitude more efficient than current heralded multiphoton sources based on spontaneous parametric down-conversion, allowing us to complete the boson-sampling experiment faster than previous equivalent implementations.