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arXiv:quant-ph/0611234 · ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC)

Toward a general theory of quantum games

Gus Gutoski, John Watrous

Published Jun 11, 2007• 133 citations
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Abstract

We study properties of quantum strategies, which are complete specifications of a given party's actions in any multiple-round interaction involving the exchange of quantum information with one or more other parties. In particular, we focus on a representation of quantum strategies that generalizes the Choi-Jamiołkowski representation of quantum operations. This new representation associates with each strategy a positive semidefinite operator acting only on the tensor product of its input and output spaces. Various facts about such representations are established, and two applications are discussed: the first is a new and conceptually simple proof of Kitaev's lower bound for strong coin-flipping, and the second is a proof of the exact characterization QRG = EXP of the class of problems having quantum refereed games.

DOI
10.1145/1250790.1250873

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We study properties of quantum strategies, which are complete specifications of a given party's actions in any multiple-round interaction involving the exchange of quantum information with one or more other parties. In particular, we focus on a representation of quantum strategies that generalizes the Choi-Jamiołkowski representation of quantum operations. This new representation associates with each strategy a positive semidefinite operator acting only on the tensor product of its input and output spaces. Various facts about such representations are established, and two applications are discussed: the first is a new and conceptually simple proof of Kitaev's lower bound for strong coin-flipping, and the second is a proof of the exact characterization QRG = EXP of the class of problems having quantum refereed games.
Abstract We study properties of quantum strategies, which are complete specifications of a givenparty's actions in any multiple-round interaction involving the exchange of quantum information with one or more other parties. In particular, we focus on a representation of quantumstrategies that generalizes the Choi-Jamiol/kowski representation of quantum operations. This new representation associates with each strategy a positive semidefinite operator acting onlyon the tensor product of its input and output spaces. Various facts about such representations are established, and two applications are discussed: the first is a new and conceptually simpleproof of Kitaev's lower bound for strong coin-flipping, and the second is a proof of the exact characterization QRG = EXP of the class of problems having quantum refereed games. 1 Introduction The theory of games provides a general structure within which both cooperation and competitionamong independent entities may be modeled, and provides powerful tools for analyzing these models. Applications of this theory have fundamental importance in many areas of science.This paper considers games in which the players may exchange and process quantum information. We focus on competitive games, and within this context the types of games we consider arevery general. For instance, they allow multiple rounds of interaction among the players involved, and place no restrictions on players ' strategies beyond those imposed by the theory of quantuminformation. While classical games can be viewed as a special case of quantum games, it is important tostress that there are fundamental differences between general quantum games and classical games. For example, the two most standard representations of classical games, namely the normal formand extensive form representations, are not directly applicable to general quantum games. This is due to the nature of quantum information, which admits a continuum of pure (meaning extremal)
This thesis is divided into two parts. In Part I we introduce a new formalism for quantum strategies, which specify the actions of one party in any multi-party interaction involving the exchange of multiple quantum messages among the parties. This formalism associates with each strategy a single positive semidefinite operator acting only upon the tensor product of the input and output message spaces for the strategy. We establish three fundamental properties of this new representation for quantum strategies and we list several applications, including a quantum version of von Neumann's celebrated 1928 Min-Max Theorem for zero-sum games and an efficient algorithm for computing the value of such a game. In Part II we establish several properties of a class of quantum operations that can be implemented locally with shared quantum entanglement or classical randomness. In particular, we establish the existence of a ball of local operations with shared randomness lying within the space spanned by the no-signaling operations and centred at the completely noisy channel. The existence of this ball is employed to prove that the weak membership problem for local operations with shared entanglement is strongly NP-hard. We also provide characterizations of local operations in terms of linear functionals that are positive and "completely" positive on a certain cone of Hermitian operators, under a natural notion of complete positivity appropriate to that cone. We end the thesis with a discussion of the properties of no-signaling quantum operations.
We develop a method for the transfer of perfect strategies between various classes of two-player, one round cooperative non-local games with quantum inputs and outputs using the simulation paradigm in quantum information theory. We show that such a transfer is possible when canonically associated operator spaces for each game are quantum homomorphic or isomorphic, as defined in the joint work of H. and Todorov (2024). We examine a new class of QNS correlations, needed for the transfer of strategies between games, and characterize them in terms of states on tensor products of canonical operator systems. We define jointly tracial correlations and show they correspond to traces acting on tensor products of canonical C∗{\rm C}^{*}C∗-algebras associated with individual game parties. We then make an inquiry into the initial application of such results to the study of concurrent quantum games.
This paper is concerned with complexity theoretic aspects of a general formulation of quantum game theory that models strategic interactions among rational agents that process and exchange quantum information. In particular, we prove that the computational problem of finding an approximate Nash equilibrium in a broad class of quantum games is, like the analogous problem for classical games, included in (and therefore complete for) the complexity class PPAD. Our main technical contribution, which facilitates this inclusion, is an extension of prior methods in computational game theory to strategy spaces that are characterized by semidefinite programs.
The quantum strategy (or quantum combs ) framework is a useful tool for reasoning about interactions among entities that process and exchange quantum information over the course of multiple turns. We prove a time-reversal property for a class of linear functions, defined on quantum strategy representations within this framework, that corresponds to the set of rank-one positive semidefinite operators on a certain space. This time-reversal property states that the maximum value obtained by such a function over all valid quantum strategies is also obtained when the direction of time for the function is reversed, despite the fact that the strategies themselves are generally not time reversible. An application of this fact is an alternative proof of a known relationship between the conditional min- and max-entropy of bipartite quantum states, along with generalizations of this relationship.
In this paper, we introduce a framework of new mathematical representation of Game Theory, including static classical game and static quantum game. The idea is to find a set of base vectors in every single-player strategy space and to define their inner product so as to form them as a Hilbert space, and then form a Hilbert space of system state. Basic ideas, concepts and formulas in Game Theory have been reexpressed in such a space of system state. This space provides more possible strategies than traditional classical game and traditional quantum game. So besides those two games, more games have been defined in different strategy spaces. All the games have been unified in the new representation and their relation has been discussed. General Nash Equilibrium for all the games has been proposed but without a general proof of the existence. Besides the theoretical description, ideas and technics from Statistical Physics, such as Kinetics Equation and Thermal Equilibrium can be easily incorporated into Game Theory through such a representation. This incorporation gives an endogenous method for refinement of Equilibrium State and some hits to simplify the calculation of Equilibrium State. The more privileges of this new representation depends on further application on more theoretical and real games. Here, almost all ideas and conclusions are shown by examples and argument, while, we wish, lately, we can give mathematical proof for most results.