Interferometrically estimating a quadratic form for any immanant of a matrix and its permutations

Abstract: We devise a multiphoton interferometry scheme for sampling a quadratic function of a specific immanant for any submatrix of a unitary matrix and its row permutations. The full unitary matrix describes a passive, linear interferometer, and its submatrix is used when photons enter in and are detected at subsets of possible input and output channels. Immanants are mathematical constructs that interpolate between the permanent and determinant; contrary to determinants and permanents, which have meaningful physical applications, immanants are devoid of physical meaning classically but here are shown to be meaningful in a quantum setting. Our quadratic form of immanants is sampled by injecting vacuum and single photons into interferometer input ports such that the photon arrival times are entangled, in contrast to previous methods that control arrival times without entangling. Our method works for any number of photons, and we solve explicitly the quadratic form for the two-, three- and four-photon cases.