We consider two aspects of quantum game theory: the extent to which the quantum solution solves the original classical game, and to what extent the new solution can be obtained in a classical model.
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 analyzed as a non-factorizable game and determine the limitations of our approach.
We bound separations between the entangled and classical values for several classes of nonlocal $t$-player games. Our motivating question is whether there is a family of $t$-player XOR games for which the entangled bias is $1$ but for which the classical bias goes down to $0$, for fixed $t$. Answering this question would have important consequences in the study of multi-party communication complexity, as a positive answer would imply an unbounded separation between randomized communication complexity with and without entanglement. Our contribution to answering the question is identifying several general classes of games for which the classical bias can not go to zero when the entangled bias stays above a constant threshold. This rules out the possibility of using these games to answer our motivating question. A previously studied set of XOR games, known not to give a positive answer to the question, are those for which there is a quantum strategy that attains value 1 using a so-called Schmidt state. We generalize this class to mod-$m$ games and show that their classical value is always at least $frac{1}{m} + frac{m-1}{m} t^{1-t}$. Secondly, for free XOR games, in which the input distribution is of product form, we show $beta(G) geq beta^*(G)^{2^t}$ where $beta(G)$ and $beta^*(G)$ are the classical and entangled biases of the game respectively. We also introduce so-called line games, an example of which is a slight modification of the Magic Square game, and show that they can not give a positive answer to the question either. Finally we look at two-player unique games and show that if the entangled value is $1-epsilon$ then the classical value is at least $1-mathcal{O}(sqrt{epsilon log k})$ where $k$ is the number of outputs in the game. Our proofs use semidefinite-programming techniques, the Gowers inverse theorem and hypergraph norms.
We investigate sublinear classical and quantum algorithms for matrix games, a fundamental problem in optimization and machine learning, with provable guarantees. Given a matrix $Ainmathbb{R}^{ntimes d}$, sublinear algorithms for the matrix game $min_{xinmathcal{X}}max_{yinmathcal{Y}} y^{top} Ax$ were previously known only for two special cases: (1) $mathcal{Y}$ being the $ell_{1}$-norm unit ball, and (2) $mathcal{X}$ being either the $ell_{1}$- or the $ell_{2}$-norm unit ball. We give a sublinear classical algorithm that can interpolate smoothly between these two cases: for any fixed $qin (1,2]$, we solve the matrix game where $mathcal{X}$ is a $ell_{q}$-norm unit ball within additive error $epsilon$ in time $tilde{O}((n+d)/{epsilon^{2}})$. We also provide a corresponding sublinear quantum algorithm that solves the same task in time $tilde{O}((sqrt{n}+sqrt{d})textrm{poly}(1/epsilon))$ with a quadratic improvement in both $n$ and $d$. Both our classical and quantum algorithms are optimal in the dimension parameters $n$ and $d$ up to poly-logarithmic factors. Finally, we propose sublinear classical and quantum algorithms for the approximate Caratheodory problem and the $ell_{q}$-margin support vector machines as applications.
Can a classical system command a general adversarial quantum system to realize arbitrary quantum dynamics? If so, then we could realize the dream of device-independent quantum cryptography: using untrusted quantum devices to establish a shared random key, with security based on the correctness of quantum mechanics. It would also allow for testing whether a claimed quantum computer is truly quantum. Here we report a technique by which a classical system can certify the joint, entangled state of a bipartite quantum system, as well as command the application of specific operators on each subsystem. This is accomplished by showing a strong converse to Tsirelsons optimality result for the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) game: the only way to win many games is if the bipartite state is close to the tensor product of EPR states, and the measurements are the optimal CHSH measurements on successive qubits. This leads directly to a scheme for device-independent quantum key distribution. Control over the state and operators can also be leveraged to create more elaborate protocols for reliably realizing general quantum circuits.
Can a classical system command a general adversarial quantum system to realize arbitrary quantum dynamics? If so, then we could realize the dream of device-independent quantum cryptography: using untrusted quantum devices to establish a shared random key, with security based on the correctness of quantum mechanics. It would also allow for testing whether a claimed quantum computer is truly quantum. Here we report a technique by which a classical system can certify the joint, entangled state of a bipartite quantum system, as well as command the application of specific operators on each subsystem. This is accomplished by showing a strong converse to Tsirelsons optimality result for the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) game: the only way to win many games is if the bipartite state is close to the tensor product of EPR states, and the measurements are the optimal CHSH measurements on successive qubits. This leads directly to a scheme for device-independent quantum key distribution. Control over the state and operators can also be leveraged to create more elaborate protocols for realizing general quantum circuits, and to establish that QMIP = MIP*.