Complexity of full counting statistics of free quantum particles in product states

Abstract

We study the computational complexity of quantum-mechanical expectation values of single-particle operators in bosonic and fermionic multi-particle product states. Such expectation values appear, in particular, in full-counting-statistics problems. Depending on the initial multi-particle product state, the expectation values may be either easy to compute (the required number of operations scales polynomially with the particle number) or hard to compute (at least as hard as a permanent of a matrix). However, if we only consider full counting statistics in a finite number of final single-particle states, then the full-counting-statistics generating function becomes easy to compute in all the analyzed cases. We prove the latter statement for the general case of the fermionic product state and for the single-boson product state (the same as used in the boson-sampling proposal). This result may be relevant for using multi-particle product states as a resource for quantum computing.