Multi-Boson Correlation Sampling

Abstract

We give a full description of the problem of Multi-Boson Correlation Sampling (MBCS) at the output of a random interferometer for single input photons in arbitrary multimode pure states. The MBCS prob- lem is the task of sampling at the interferometer output from the probability distribution associated with polarization- and time-resolved detections. We discuss the richness of the physics and the complexity of the MBCS problem for nonidentical input photons. We also compare the MBCS problem with the standard bo- son sampling problem, where the input photons are assumed to be identical and the system is "classically" averaging over the detection times and polarizations.