Max Modes for Fock Backend

Photonic Software Strawberry Fields
1

Is there a reason (beyond computational overhead) why the Fock backend supports a maximum of 23 modes specifically?

2

Hey @ashryver! Welcome to the forum :partying_face:

I’m pretty sure it’s a hard-cap enforced by Numpy :thinking: (numpy/numpy/core/include/numpy/ndarraytypes.h at maintenance/1.23.x · numpy/numpy · GitHub). Is there somewhere in the plugin code that says 23 modes is the highest you can get?

3

Yeah, it shows up as an error message when you try to run any 23+ mode boson sampling simulation on the Fock backend. I found that curious since 23 is quite an odd number haha

4

Interesting! Probably a numpy thing :slight_smile: