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# High-efficiency multiphoton boson sampling

## Abstract

Boson sampling is considered as a strong candidate to demonstrate ‘quantum computational supremacy’ over classical computers. However, previous proof-of-principle experiments suffered from small photon number and low sampling rates owing to the inefficiencies of the single-photon sources and multiport optical interferometers. Here, we develop two central components for high-performance boson sampling: robust multiphoton interferometers with 99% transmission rate and actively demultiplexed single-photon sources based on a quantum dot–micropillar with simultaneously high efficiency, purity and indistinguishability. We implement and validate three-, four- and five-photon boson sampling, and achieve sampling rates of 4.96 kHz, 151 Hz and 4 Hz, respectively, which are over 24,000 times faster than previous experiments. Our architecture can be scaled up for a larger number of photons and with higher sampling rates to compete with classical computers, and might provide experimental evidence against the extended Church–Turing thesis.

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## Acknowledgements

We thank S. Aaronson, B. Sanders and P. Rohde for helpful discussions. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Fundamental Research Program and the State of Bavaria.

## Author information

Authors

### Contributions

C.-Y.L. and J.-W.P. conceived and designed the experiment, C.S., M.K. and S.H. grew and fabricated the quantum dot samples. H.W., Y.H., Y.-H.L., Z.-E.S., B.L., H.-L.H., X.D., M.-C.C., C.L., J.Q., J.-P.L., Y.-M.H., C.S., M.K., C.-Z.P., S.H. and C.-Y.L. performed the experiment, S.H., C.-Y. L. and J.-W.P. analysed the experimental data. C.-Y.L. and J.-W.P. wrote the paper.

### Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Chao-Yang Lu or Jian-Wei Pan.

## Ethics declarations

### Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

## Supplementary information

### Supplementary information

Supplementary information (PDF 997 kb)

## Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

Wang, H., He, Y., Li, YH. et al. High-efficiency multiphoton boson sampling. Nature Photon 11, 361–365 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2017.63

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