On characterizing quantum correlated equilibria

Abstract

Quantum game theory lays a foundation for understanding the interaction of people using quantum computers with conflicting interests. Recently Zhang proposed a simple yet rich model to study quantum strategic games, and addressed some quantitative questions for general games of growing sizes \cite{Zha10}. However, one fundamental question that the paper did not consider is the characterization of quantum correlated equilibria (QCE). In this paper, we answer this question by giving a sufficient and necessary condition for an arbitrary state $\rho$ being a QCE. In addition, when the condition fails to hold for some player $i$, we give an explicit POVM for that player to achieve a strictly positive gain. Finally, we give some upper bounds for the maximum gain by playing quantum strategies over classical ones, and the bounds are tight for some games.