Quantum computers are unnecessary for exponentially-efficient computation or simulation if the Extended Church-Turing thesis---a foundational tenet of computer science---is correct. The thesis would be directly contradicted by a physical device that efficiently performs a task believed to be intractable for classical computers. Such a task is BosonSampling: obtaining a distribution of n bosons scattered by some linear-optical unitary process. Here we test the central premise of BosonSampling, experimentally verifying that the amplitudes of 3-photon scattering processes are given by the permanents of submatrices generated from a unitary describing a 6-mode integrated optical circuit. We find the protocol to be robust, working even with the unavoidable effects of photon loss, non-ideal sources, and imperfect detection. Strong evidence against the Extended Church-Turing thesis will come from scaling to large numbers of photons, which is a much simpler task than building a universal quantum computer.Comment: See also Crespi et al., arXiv:1212.2783; Spring et al., arXiv:1212.2622; and Tillmann et al., arXiv:1212.224

Topological phases exhibit some of the most striking phenomena in modern physics. much of the rich behaviour of quantum Hall systems, topological insulators, and topological superconductors can be traced to the existence of robust bound states at interfaces between different topological phases. This robustness has applications in metrology and holds promise for future uses in quantum computing. Engineered quantum systems-notably in photonics, where wavefunctions can be observed directly-provide versatile platforms for creating and probing a variety of topological phases. Here we use photonic quantum walks to observe bound states between systems with different bulk topological properties and demonstrate their robustness to perturbations-a signature of topological protection. Although such bound states are usually discussed for static (time-independent) systems, here we demonstrate their existence in an explicitly time-dependent situation. moreover, we discover a new phenomenon: a topologically protected pair of bound states unique to periodically driven systems.

Quantum walks have a host of applications, ranging from quantum computing to the simulation of biological systems. We present an intrinsically stable, deterministic implementation of discrete quantum walks with single photons in space. The number of optical elements required scales linearly with the number of steps. We measure walks with up to 6 steps and explore the quantum-to-classical transition by introducing tunable decoherence. Finally, we also investigate the effect of absorbing boundaries and show that decoherence significantly affects the probability of absorption.