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arXiv:2602.09290

Improved Parallel Repetition for GHZ-Supported Games via Spreadness

Yang P. Liu, Shachar Lovett, Kunal Mittal

Published Feb 10, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

We prove that for any 3-player game $\mathcal G$, whose query distribution has the same support as the GHZ game (i.e., all $x,y,z\in \{0,1\}$ satisfying $x+y+z=0\pmod{2}$), the value of the $n$-fold parallel repetition of $\mathcal G$ decays exponentially fast: \[ \text{val}(\mathcal G^{\otimes n}) \leq \exp(-n^c)\] for all sufficiently large $n$, where $c>0$ is an absolute constant. We also prove a concentration bound for the parallel repetition of the GHZ game: For any constant $ε>0$, the probability that the players win at least a $\left(\frac{3}{4}+ε\right)$ fraction of the $n$ coordinates is at most $\exp(-n^c)$, where $c=c(ε)>0$ is a constant. In both settings, our work exponentially improves upon the previous best known bounds which were only polynomially small, i.e., of the order $n^{-Ω(1)}$. Our key technical tool is the notion of \emph{algebraic spreadness} adapted from the breakthrough work of Kelley and Meka (FOCS '23) on sets free of 3-term progressions.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2602.09290

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We prove that for any 3-player game G\mathcal GG, whose query distribution has the same support as the GHZ game (i.e., all x,y,z∈{0,1}x,y,z\in \{0,1\}x,y,z∈{0,1} satisfying x+y+z=0(mod2)x+y+z=0\pmod{2}x+y+z=0(mod2)), the value of the nnn-fold parallel repetition of G\mathcal GG decays exponentially fast: [ \text{val}(\mathcal G^{\otimes n}) \leq \exp(-n^c)] for all sufficiently large nnn, where c>0c>0c>0 is an absolute constant. We also prove a concentration bound for the parallel repetition of the GHZ game: For any constant ε>0ε>0ε>0, the probability that the players win at least a (34+ε)\left(\frac{3}{4}+ε\right)(43​+ε) fraction of the nnn coordinates is at most exp⁡(−nc)\exp(-n^c)exp(−nc), where c=c(ε)>0c=c(ε)>0c=c(ε)>0 is a constant. In both settings, our work exponentially improves upon the previous best known bounds which were only polynomially small, i.e., of the order n−Ω(1)n^{-Ω(1)}n−Ω(1). Our key technical tool is the notion of \emph{algebraic spreadness} adapted from the breakthrough work of Kelley and Meka (FOCS '23) on sets free of 3-term progressions.
We prove that for any 3-player game G, whose query distribution has the same support as the GHZ game (i.e., all x,y,z ∈ {0,1} satisfying x+y+z = 0 (mod 2)), the value of the n-fold parallel repetition of G decays exponentially fast: val(G^{⊗ n}) ≤ exp(-n^c) for all sufficiently large n, where c > 0 is an absolute constant. We also prove a concentration bound for the parallel repetition of the GHZ game: For any constant ε > 0, the probability that the players win at least a (3/4+ε) fraction of the n coordinates is at most exp(-n^c), where c = c(ε) > 0 is a constant. In both settings, our work exponentially improves upon the previous best known bounds which were only polynomially small, i.e., of the order n^{-Ω(1)}. Our key technical tool is the notion of algebraic spreadness adapted from the breakthrough work of Kelley and Meka (FOCS '23) on sets free of 3-term progressions.
We give a new proof of the fact that the parallel repetition of the (3-player) GHZ game reduces the value of the game to zero polynomially quickly. That is, we show that the value of the nnn-fold GHZ game is at most n−Ω(1)n^{-Ω(1)}n−Ω(1). This was first established by Holmgren and Raz [HR20]. We present a new proof of this theorem that we believe to be simpler and more direct. Unlike most previous works on parallel repetition, our proof makes no use of information theory, and relies on the use of Fourier analysis. The GHZ game [GHZ89] has played a foundational role in the understanding of quantum information theory, due in part to the fact that quantum strategies can win the GHZ game with probability 1. It is possible that improved parallel repetition bounds may find applications in this setting. Recently, Dinur, Harsha, Venkat, and Yuen [DHVY17] highlighted the GHZ game as a simple three-player game, which is in some sense maximally far from the class of multi-player games whose behavior under parallel repetition is well understood. Dinur et al. conjectured that parallel repetition decreases the value of the GHZ game exponentially quickly, and speculated that progress on proving this would shed light on parallel repetition for general multi-player (multi-prover) games.
We prove that for every 3-player (3-prover) game G\mathcal GG with value less than one, whose query distribution has the support S={(1,0,0),(0,1,0),(0,0,1)}\mathcal S = \{(1,0,0), (0,1,0), (0,0,1)\}S={(1,0,0),(0,1,0),(0,0,1)} of hamming weight one vectors, the value of the nnn-fold parallel repetition G⊗n\mathcal G^{\otimes n}G⊗n decays polynomially fast to zero; that is, there is a constant c=c(G)>0c = c(\mathcal G)>0c=c(G)>0 such that the value of the game G⊗n\mathcal G^{\otimes n}G⊗n is at most n−cn^{-c}n−c. Following the recent work of Girish, Holmgren, Mittal, Raz and Zhan (STOC 2022), our result is the missing piece that implies a similar bound for a much more general class of multiplayer games: For every\textbf{every}every 3-player game G\mathcal GG over binary questions\textit{binary questions}binary questions and arbitrary answer lengths\textit{arbitrary answer lengths}arbitrary answer lengths, with value less than 1, there is a constant c=c(G)>0c = c(\mathcal G)>0c=c(G)>0 such that the value of the game G⊗n\mathcal G^{\otimes n}G⊗n is at most n−cn^{-c}n−c. Our proof technique is new and requires many new ideas. For example, we make use of the Level-kkk inequalities from Boolean Fourier Analysis, which, to the best of our knowledge, have not been explored in this context prior to our work.
We give a new proof of the fact that the parallel repetition of the (3-player) GHZ game reduces the value of the game to zero polynomially quickly. That is, we show that the value of the n-fold GHZ game is at most n^{-Ω(1)}. This was first established by Holmgren and Raz [Holmgren and Raz, 2020]. We present a new proof of this theorem that we believe to be simpler and more direct. Unlike most previous works on parallel repetition, our proof makes no use of information theory, and relies on the use of Fourier analysis. The GHZ game [Greenberger et al., 1989] has played a foundational role in the understanding of quantum information theory, due in part to the fact that quantum strategies can win the GHZ game with probability 1. It is possible that improved parallel repetition bounds may find applications in this setting. Recently, Dinur, Harsha, Venkat, and Yuen [Dinur et al., 2017] highlighted the GHZ game as a simple three-player game, which is in some sense maximally far from the class of multi-player games whose behavior under parallel repetition is well understood. Dinur et al. conjectured that parallel repetition decreases the value of the GHZ game exponentially quickly, and speculated that progress on proving this would shed light on parallel repetition for general multi-player (multi-prover) games.
We investigate the value of parallel repetition of one-round games with any number of players k>=2. It has been an open question whether an analogue of Raz's Parallel Repetition Theorem holds for games with more than two players, i.e., whether the value of the repeated game decays exponentially with the number of repetitions. Verbitsky has shown, via a reduction to the density Hales-Jewett theorem, that the value of the repeated game must approach zero, as the number of repetitions increases. However, the rate of decay obtained in this way is extremely slow, and it is an open question whether the true rate is exponential as is the case for all two-player games. Exponential decay bounds are known for several special cases of multi-player games, e.g., free games and anchored games. In this work, we identify a certain expansion property of the base game and show all games with this property satisfy an exponential decay parallel repetition bound. Free games and anchored games satisfy this expansion property, and thus our parallel repetition theorem reproduces all earlier exponential-decay bounds for multiplayer games. More generally, our parallel repetition bound applies to all multiplayer games that are *connected* in a certain sense. We also describe a very simple game, called the GHZ game, that does not satisfy this connectivity property, and for which we do not know an exponential decay bound. We suspect that progress on bounding the value of this the parallel repetition of the GHZ game will lead to further progress on the general question.
A two-player game is played by cooperating players who are not allowed to communicate. A referee asks the players questions sampled from some known distribution and decides whether they win or not based on a known predicate of the questions and the players' answers. The parallel repetition of the game is the game in which the referee samples n independent pairs of questions and sends the corresponding questions to the players simultaneously. If the players cannot win the original game with probability better than (1−ϵ)(1-\epsilon)(1−ϵ), what's the best they can do in the repeated game? We improve earlier results of [R. Raz, SIAM J. Comput., 27 (1998), pp. 763–803] and [T. Holenstein, Theory Comput., 5 (2009), pp. 141–172], who showed that the players cannot win all copies in the repeated game with probability better than (1−ϵ/2)Ω(nϵ2/c)(1-\epsilon/2)^{\Omega(n\epsilon^2/c)}(1−ϵ/2)Ω(nϵ2/c) (here c is the length of the answers in the game), in the following ways: (i) We show that the probability of winning all copies is (1−ϵ/2)Ω(ϵn)(1-\epsilon/2)^{\Omega(\epsilon n)}(1−ϵ/2)Ω(ϵn) as long as the game is a “projection game,” the type of game most commonly used in hardness of approximation results. (ii) We prove a concentration bound for parallel repetition (of general games) showing that for any constant 0<δ<ϵ0<\delta <\epsilon0<δ<ϵ, the probability that the players win a (1−ϵ+δ)(1-\epsilon+\delta)(1−ϵ+δ) fraction of the games in the parallel repetition is at most exp⁡(−Ωϵ(δ3n/c))\exp\left(-\Omega_{\epsilon}(\delta^3 n/c)\right)exp(−Ωϵ​(δ3n/c)) (here the constant may depend on ϵ\epsilonϵ); our result has applications to testing Bell inequalities, since it implies that the parallel repetition of the CHSH game can be used to get an experiment that has a very large classical versus quantum gap. Our first bound is independent of the answer length and has a better dependence on ϵ\epsilonϵ. By the recent work of Raz [Proceedings of the 494949th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, 2008, pp. 369–373], this bound is tight. Our bound gives a generic way to improve the soundness of a probabilistically checkable proof (PCP), in a way that is independent of the answer length of the PCP. Using it, for every k, one can convert any q query PCP with answer length c, size scscsc, and soundness (1−ϵ)(1-\epsilon)(1−ϵ) into a two-query PCP with answer length ckckck, size O(ck(2s)k)O(ck (2s)^k)O(ck(2s)k), and soundness (1−ϵ/2q)Ω(ϵk/q)(1-\epsilon/2q)^{\Omega(\epsilon k/q)}(1−ϵ/2q)Ω(ϵk/q). Another consequence of our bound is that the unique games conjecture of Khot [Proceedings of the 343434th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, 2002, pp. 767–775] can now be shown to be equivalent to the following a priori weaker conjecture: There is an unbounded increasing function f:R+→R+f:\mathbb{R}^+\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^+f:R+→R+ such that for every ϵ>0\epsilon> 0ϵ>0, there exists an alphabet size M(ϵ)M(\epsilon)M(ϵ) for which it is NP-hard to distinguish a unique game with alphabet size M in which a (1−ϵ2)(1-\epsilon^2)(1−ϵ2) fraction of the constraints can be satisfied from one in which a (1−ϵf(1/ϵ))(1-\epsilon f(1/\epsilon))(1−ϵf(1/ϵ)) fraction of the constraints can be satisfied.