Playing a quantum game on polarization vortices

Abstract

The quantum mechanical approach to the well known prisoners dilemma, one of the basic examples to illustrate the concepts of Game Theory, is implemented with a classical optical resource, nonquantum entanglement between spin and orbital degrees of freedom of laser modes. The concept of entanglement is crucial in the quantum version of the game, which brings novel features with a richer universe of strategies. As we show, this richness can be achieved in a quite unexpected context, namely that of paraxial spin-orbit modes in classical optics.