We establish the first hardness results for the problem of computing the value of one-round games played by a verifier and a team of provers who can share quantum entanglement. In particular, we show that it is NP-hard to approximate within an inverse polynomial the value of a one-round game with (i) a quantum verifier and two entangled provers or (ii) a classical verifier and three entangled provers. Previously it was not even known if computing the value exactly is NP-hard. We also describe a mathematical conjecture, which, if true, would imply hardness of approximation of entangled-prover games to within a constant. Using our techniques we also show that every language in PSPACE has a two-prover one-round interactive proof system with perfect completeness and soundness
1−1/poly even against entangled provers. We start our proof by describing two ways to modify classical multiprover games to make them resistant to entangled provers. We then show that a strategy for the modified game that uses entanglement can be “rounded” to one that does not. The results then follow from classical inapproximability bounds. Our work implies that, unless
P=NP, the values of entangled-prover games cannot be computed by semidefinite programs that are polynomial in the size of the verifier's system, a method that has been successful for more restricted quantum games.
We describe two generic ways to make multi-prover classical games resistant against entangled provers. The first uses quantum communication and a quantum verifier, the second adds an additional prover. This leads to several new results on the power of proof systems with entangled provers. We show that NEXP ⊆ QMIP1,s(2, 1) and NEXP ⊆ MIP1,s(3, 1) with soundness s = 1− 2− poly(n) and PSPACE ⊆ MIP1,s(2, 1) with soundness s = 1 − 1/ poly(n), providing the first non-trivial bounds in this setting. Moreover, our results imply that, unless P = NP, the value of entangled prover games cannot be computed by semi-definite programs that are polynomial in the size of the verifier’s system, a method that has been successful for more restricted quantum games. ∗also at CNRS & LRI, Univerite de Paris-Sud, Orsay, France †Partially supported by the European Commission under the Integrated Project Qubit Applications (QAP) funded by the IST directorate as Contract Number 015848 and by an Alon Fellowship of the Israeli Higher Council of Academic Research. ‡Part of this work was completed at Caltech. Supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants PHY-0456720 and CCF-0524828, by EU project QAP, and by NWO VICI project 639-023-302. Part of this research has been funded by the Dutch BSIK/BRICKS project. §Work partly done while at LRI, Univ. de Paris-Sud, Orsay.
We establish the first hardness results for the problem of computing the value of one-round games played by a verifier and a team of provers who can share quantum entanglement. In particular, we show that it is NP-hard to approximate within an inverse polynomial the value of a one-round game with (i) quantum verifier and two entangled provers or (ii) classical verifier and three entangled provers. Previously it was not even known if computing the value exactly is NP-hard. We also describe a mathematical conjecture, which, if true, would imply hardness of approximation to within a constant. We start our proof by describing two ways to modify classical multi-prover games to make them resistant to entangled provers. We then show that a strategy for the modified game that uses entanglement can be ``rounded'' to one that does not. The results then follow from classical inapproximability bounds. Our work implies that, unless P=NP, the values of entangled-prover games cannot be computed by semidefinite programs that are polynomial in the size of the verifier's system, a method that has been successful for more restricted quantum games.
We study the problem of approximating the commuting-operator value of a two-player non-local game. It is well-known that it is
NP-complete to decide whether the classical value of a non-local game is 1 or
1−ε. Furthermore, as long as
ε is small enough, this result does not depend on the gap
ε. In contrast, a recent result of Fitzsimons, Ji, Vidick, and Yuen shows that the complexity of computing the quantum value grows without bound as the gap
ε decreases. In this paper, we show that this also holds for the commuting-operator value of a game. Specifically, in the language of multi-prover interactive proofs, we show that the power of
MIPco(2,1,1,s) (proofs with two provers, one round, completeness probability
1, soundness probability
s, and commuting-operator strategies) can increase without bound as the gap
1−s gets arbitrarily small. Our results also extend naturally in two ways, to perfect zero-knowledge protocols, and to lower bounds on the complexity of computing the approximately-commuting value of a game. Thus we get lower bounds on the complexity class
PZK-
MIPδco(2,1,1,s) of perfect zero-knowledge multi-prover proofs with approximately-commuting operator strategies, as the gap
1−s gets arbitrarily small. While we do not know any computable time upper bound on the class
MIPco, a result of the first author and Vidick shows that for
s=1−1/poly(f(n)) and
δ=1/poly(f(n)), the class
MIPδco(2,1,1,s), with constant communication from the provers, is contained in
TIME(exp(poly(f(n)))). We give a lower bound of
coNTIME(f(n)) (ignoring constants inside the function) for this class, which is tight up to polynomial factors assuming the exponential time hypothesis.
We study the problem of approximating the commuting-operator value of a two-player non-local game. It is well-known that it is NP-complete to decide whether the classical value of a non-local game is 1 or 1- epsilon, promised that one of the two is the case. Furthermore, as long as epsilon is small enough, this result does not depend on the gap epsilon. In contrast, a recent result of Fitzsimons, Ji, Vidick, and Yuen shows that the complexity of computing the quantum value grows without bound as the gap epsilon decreases. In this paper, we show that this also holds for the commuting-operator value of a game. Specifically, in the language of multi-prover interactive proofs, we show that the power of MIP^{co}(2,1,1,s) (proofs with two provers, one round, completeness probability 1, soundness probability s, and commuting-operator strategies) can increase without bound as the gap 1-s gets arbitrarily small. Our results also extend naturally in two ways, to perfect zero-knowledge protocols, and to lower bounds on the complexity of computing the approximately-commuting value of a game. Thus we get lower bounds on the complexity class PZK-MIP^{co}_{delta}(2,1,1,s) of perfect zero-knowledge multi-prover proofs with approximately-commuting operator strategies, as the gap 1-s gets arbitrarily small. While we do not know any computable time upper bound on the class MIP^{co}, a result of the first author and Vidick shows that for s = 1-1/poly(f(n)) and delta = 1/poly(f(n)), the class MIP^{co}_delta(2,1,1,s), with constant communication from the provers, is contained in TIME(exp(poly(f(n)))). We give a lower bound of coNTIME(f(n)) (ignoring constants inside the function) for this class, which is tight up to polynomial factors assuming the exponential time hypothesis.
We introduce a new variant of quantum multiprover interactive proofs (QMIP) where the provers and the verifier are quantum. The verifier can exchange quantum messages with the provers. The provers cannot communicate quantumly between themselves and do not share entanglement, but are unlimited in the classical communication between them, even after receiving messages from the verifier. We show that any language in nondeterministic exponential time (NEXP) can be recognized in this model efficiently, with just two provers and two rounds of communication, and with a constant completeness/soundness gap. This is in contrast to the result of [R. Jain et al., Comm. ACM, 53 (2010), pp. 102--109], which shows that QIP = PSPACE, or equivalently that the set of languages that can be recognized by a quantum verifier communicating with a single quantum prover is equal to PSPACE. To analyze the cheating power of the provers, we give them more power and allow them to perform any separable operation. We then show a unique two-phase protocol in which the provers first commit to a superposition of correct answers to all possible questions, and then in the second phase the verifier opens up the committed answer and checks for correctness and consistency.