Recently the concept of quantum information has been introduced into game theory. Here we present the first study of quantum games with more than two players. We discover that such games can possess an alternative form of equilibrium strategy, one which has no analog either in traditional games or even in two-player quantum games. In these ``coherent'' equilibria, entanglement shared among multiple players enables different kinds of cooperative behavior: indeed it can act as a contract, in the sense that it prevents players from successfully betraying one another.
A well-known model in game theory, the Volunteer's Dilemma describes a group of
n players who decide whether to volunteer for a collective benefit at a personal cost, or to abstain and risk forfeiting the benefit altogether. A quantum version of this dilemma, developed within the Eisert-Wilkens-Lewenstein framework, allows each player to manipulate one qubit of a shared entangled state, leading to symmetric Nash equilibria with higher expected payoffs than in the classical game. Existing analyses, however, assume maximal entanglement, which is experimentally demanding for hardware-constrained quantum systems. Within the same framework, we introduce a generalized Quantum Volunteer's Dilemma with a tunable entanglement parameter
γ and study the extent to which equilibrium behavior depends on the level of entanglement. We derive explicit conditions relating
γ, the number of players, and the players' strategies under which symmetric Nash equilibria exist, focusing on two canonical strategy profiles: one for
2≤n≤9, and one for even
n. We find that maximal entanglement is not required to sustain symmetric equilibria. Instead, equilibrium behavior persists above a threshold value, which we compute analytically in both cases. We also demonstrate that the threshold value directly depends on system size.
In game theory, a popular model of a struggle for survival among three competing agents is a truel, or three-person generalization of a duel. Adopting the ideas recently developed in quantum game theory, we present a quantum scheme for the problems of duels and truels. In the classical case, the outcome is sensitive to the precise rules under which the truel is performed and can be counterintuitive. These aspects carry over into our quantum scheme, but interference amongst the players' strategies can arise, leading to game equilibria different from the classical case.