Speedup in classical simulation of Gaussian boson sampling

Abstract

Gaussian boson sampling is an alternative model for demonstrating quantum computational supremacy, where squeezed states are injected into every input mode, instead of applying single photons as in the case of standard boson sampling. Here by analyzing numerically the computational costs, we establish a lower bound for achieving quantum computational supremacy for a class of Gaussian boson-sampling problems. Specifically, we propose a more efficient method for calculating the transition probabilities, leading to a significant reduction of the simulation costs. Particularly, our numerical results indicate that one can simulate up to 18 photons for Gaussian boson sampling at the output subspace on a normal laptop, 20 photons on a commercial workstation with 256 cores, and about 30 photons for supercomputers. These numbers are significantly smaller than those in standard boson sampling, suggesting that Gaussian boson sampling could be experimentally-friendly for demonstrating quantum computational supremacy.