An Unbiased Quantum Random Number Generator Based on Boson Sampling

Abstract: It has been proven that Boson sampling is a much promising model of optical quantum computation, which has been applied to designing quantum computer successfully, such as "Jiuzhang". However, the meaningful randomness of Boson sampling results, whose correctness and significance were proved from a specific quantum mechanical distribution, has not been utilized or exploited. In this research, Boson sampling is applied to design a novel Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG) by fully exploiting the randomness of Boson sampling results, and its prototype system is constructed with the programmable silicon photonic processor, which can generate uniform and unbiased random sequences and overcome the shortcomings of the existing discrete QRNGs such as source-related, high demand for the photon number resolution capability of the detector and slow self-detection generator speed. Boson sampling is implemented as a random entropy source, and random bit strings with satisfactory randomness and uniformity can be obtained after post-processing the sampling results. It is the first approach for applying the randomness of Boson sampling results to develop a practical prototype system for actual tasks, and the experiment results demonstrate the designed Boson sampling-based QRNG prototype system pass 15 tests of the NIST SP 800-22 statistical test component, which prove that Boson sampling has great potential for practical applications with desirable performance besides quantum advantage.