We study a class of nonlocal games, called transitive games, for which the set of perfect strategies forms a semigroup. We establish several interesting correspondences of bisynchronous transitive games with the theory of compact quantum groups. In particular, we associate a quantum permutation group with each bisynchronous transitive game and vice versa. We prove that the existence of a C*-strategy, the existence of a quantum commuting strategy, and the existence of a classical strategy are all equivalent for bisynchronous transitive games. We then use some of these correspondences to establish necessary and sufficient conditions for some classes of correlations, that arise as perfect strategies of transitive games, to be nonlocal.
We establish several strong equivalences of synchronous non-local games, in the sense that the corresponding game algebras are
∗-isomorphic. We first show that the game algebra of any synchronous game on
n inputs and
k outputs is
∗-isomorphic to the game algebra of an associated bisynchronous game on
nk inputs and
nk outputs. As a result, we show that there are bisynchronous games with equal question and answer sets, whose optimal strategies only exist in the quantum commuting model, and not in the quantum approximate model. Moreover, we show that there are bisynchronous games with equal question and answer sets that have non-zero game algebras, but no winning quantum commuting strategies, resolving a problem of V.I. Paulsen and M. Rahaman. We also exhibit a
∗-isomorphism between any synchronous game algebra with
n questions and
k>3 answers and a synchronous game algebra with
n(k−2) questions and
3 answers.
A game-theoretic setting provides a mathematical basis for analysis of strategic interaction among competing agents and provides insights into both classical and quantum decision theory and questions of strategic choice. An outstanding mathematical question is to understand the conditions under which a classical game-theoretic setting can be transformed to a quantum game, and under which conditions there is an equivalence. In this paper, we consider quantum games as those that allow non-factorizable probabilities. We discuss two approaches for obtaining a non-factorizable game and study the outcome of such games. We demonstrate how the standard version of a quantum game can be analysed as a non-factorizable game and determine the limitations of our approach.