CCP2018

UC DAVIS, CA
29TH JULY - 2ND AUGUST

ARITRA DAS1 AND PRATYUSHA CHOWDHURY2

SOCIAL ADVANTAGE WITH

MIXED ENTANGLED STATES
1 DEPT. OF PHYSICS, INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY KANPUR, INDIA. 
2 DEPT. OF PHYSICS, ST. XAVIER’S COLLEGE, KOLKATA, INDIA
INTRODUCTION 2

GAME THEORY
‣ Game theory is the mathematical modelling of strategic interaction
among rational beings. A mathematical game comprises a set of of
“players” with their own set of possible moves or “actions” and
“strategies” for using them that are aimed at maximising their individual
rewards or “payoffs”.

‣ Games can be cooperative (where there is a common interest for all

the players involved) or non-cooperative (where there is a conflicting
interest among different players).

‣ Nash proved in 1950 that, in all non-cooperative games with a finite

number of players, each with a finite number of moves there exists at
least one such Nash Equilibrium.
INTRODUCTION 3

BAYESIAN GAMES AND NON LOCALITY

▸ Bayesian Games, or Games of Incomplete Information are games where  the
players are uncertain about some important parameters of the game
situation.

▸ In 1974, Aumann proved the existence of Correlated Equilibria in these

games, as opposed to Nash Equilibria.

‣ The principle of Locality states that an object can only be affected by it’s
immediate surroundings and not by remote or distant objects. Unlike
classical physics, quantum theory is not consistent with this and is inherently
non-local in nature for example, Quantum Entanglement.

‣ In 2013, Brunner and Linden demonstrated strong links between Quantum

Non Locality and Bayesian Game Theory by showing that the normal form
of a Bayesian game is equivalent to a Bell Inequality test scenario.
INTRODUCTION 4

CONFLICTING INTEREST GAMES

‣ However, the examples Brunner and Linden provided were all
Common Interest Games (games where it is beneficial for both the
players to cooperate rather than oppose each other).

‣ In fact, until 2015, all other known non local games, including the 

GHZ -Mermin game, the Bell - CHSH game and the Hidden Matching
game were all examples of Common Interest Games.

‣ In 2015, however, Anna Pappa et al. demonstrated that quantum advice

can offer an advantage compared to classical advice even in
Conflicting Interest Games by explicitly constructing such a game.
INTRODUCTION 5

FAIR AND UNFAIR EQUILIBRIA

‣ Classical equilibria can be of two types —

1. Fair Equilibria — where the average payoffs for both the 


players are equal,

2. Unfair Equilibria — where the payoffs for the players are unequal.

‣ Up until 2016, most of the games (both Common Interest and

Conflicting Interest) proposed, dealt with Fair equilibria - that is, they
showed that quantum fair payoffs surpass classical fair equilibrium
payoffs.

‣ In 2016, Roy and Mukherjee et al. showed that quantum strategies can
outperform not only fair classical equilibrium payoffs but unfair
equilibrium payoffs too.
INTRODUCTION 6

SOCIAL WELFARE SOLUTIONS AND PURE ENTANGLED STATES

‣ Until now, we’ve been talking about equilibria for individual players
Psychological factors indicate that sometimes, instead of focusing solely
on their individual payoffs, players may also consider additional social
goals like maximising the sum of their individual payoffs.

‣ Out of all the possible quantum strategies, the ones that increase the
sum of the payoffs (above the classical value) are called Quantum
Social Welfare Solution (Q-SWS) and the quantum state producing this
strategy is called Quantum Social Welfare Advice (Q-SWA).

‣ In 2017, Banik et al. showed that any two - qubit Pure Entangled State
can act as Quantum-SWA for some Bayesian Game.
PROBLEM STATEMENT 7

CAN MIXED ENTANGLED STATES

BE USED AS QUANTUM-SWA
FOR BAYESIAN GAMES?
PROBLEM STATEMENT 8

PREMISE
▸ Game must have individual Quantum Payoffs higher than some Classical
Equilibrium Payoff

▸ Social Welfare Value of the Quantum State should be higher than the
Maximum Classically Possible Value

▸ Scenario:

2 players: A and B

3 possible questions for each of them: (A1, A2, A3) and (B1, B2, B3)

2 possible answers: (0, 1)

‣ P(xy|AiBj) — Conditional Probability that A answers x on asking the

question Ai and B answers y for the question Bj.
THE CLASSICAL GAME 9

CLASSICAL STRATEGIES

▸ Classical Strategies are strategies decided by the players individually

(before the game starts) on how to answer each question

▸ For example, A could answer 0 to all questions while B could answer (0,
1, 0) to (B1, B2, B3) respectively.

▸ Since there are 3 questions with 2 possible answers each, there are 8
possible strategies for each individual player — g0, g1, … g7
THE CLASSICAL GAME 10

NO SIGNALLING PROBABILITY BOXES

‣ A general No Signalling Probability Box or Local Box looks like:

‣ Row AiBj and column xy represents probability of answering (x, y) given

the question AiBj , that is P(x, y|AiBj )
THE CLASSICAL GAME 11

NO SIGNALLING PROBABILITY BOXES (CONTD)

‣ From every strategy pair (gA, gB) we can calculate it’s local box. For
example if A answers 0 to all questions while B answers (0, 1, 0) to (B1,
B2, B3) respectively,
THE CLASSICAL GAME 12

UTILITY BOXES
‣ A’s answers are listed
along the columns and
B’s along the rows.

‣ Given the pair of

strategies that are being
used, the player’s
individual payoffs can
be calculated from the
Utility Boxes.
THE CLASSICAL GAME 13

CLASSICAL PAYOFFS
▸ The Expected Payoff for each player can be calculated as:




▸ Using the Utility Boxes and the Local Boxes:

THE CLASSICAL GAME 14

CLASSICAL EQUILIBRIA
‣ Since each of the players has a choice of 8 different strategies (g0 ,g1,
… g7), the final payoff box is a 8×8 table, with the first element of every
pair being the payoff for Alice and the second for Bob.

‣ A factor of 1/27 has been ignored in the table, to keep things cleaner.

‣ All the Equilibria have been highlighted. They are all unfair/biased.

‣ Also, the Social Welfare Value is 15/27

THE QUANTUM GAME 15

THE INEQUALITY
▸ The key step in setting up the quantum game is implanting an
inequality in the payoff functions which can be violated by quantum
physics but not classical physics

▸ The I-3322 Inequality was discovered in 2003 and it’s maximum value
was calculated in 2010. It describes a 2 player, 3 question, 2 answer
scenario like ours.

‣ The important thing about this inequality is that it is inequivalent to the

Bell - CHSH inequality. This means that there are states that don’t violate
Bell - CHSH inequality but violate this.
THE QUANTUM GAME 16

THE INEQUALITY (CONTD)

▸ The inequality is usually represented as:

▸ On expanding and substituting the probabilities from the Local Box, 


this yields:

▸ The maximum value of this expression is:

CLASSICAL 0
QUANTUM 0.25
NO SIGNALLING 1
THE QUANTUM GAME 17

MAXIMUM VIOLATION OF THE INEQUALITY AND SPECIAL STATES

▸ The maximum quantum violation of the inequality is achieved using a
Maximally Entangled Bell State and appropriate measurements.

▸ Also, since the upper bound on the social welfare

value of this game has can easily be calculated:

CLASSICAL 5/9 = 15/27

QUANTUM 16.5/27
NO SIGNALLING 21/27

▸ Notice that this classical upper bound coincides with the Social Welfare
Value we calculated from the Classical Equilibria Table.
THE QUANTUM GAME 18

STATE AND MEASUREMENT SETTINGS

▸ The Mixed Entangled State that’ll be used as Q-SWA is:

▸ This state is special, because it doesn’t violate Bell’s Inequality, but does
violate I-3322 inequality to give a value of 0.0129 under the following
projective measurements (specified by their polar and azimuthal angles)

Such that
THE QUANTUM GAME 19

MEASUREMENT OUTCOMES AND QUANTUM PAYOFFS

‣ Applying the measurements, with the appropriate eigenvalues, we
evaluate all the variables of the Local Box:

‣ The quantum payoff values can then be calculated to be:

and

‣ This value exceeds the classical equilibrium value of . Also the

Quantum Social Welfare Value exceeds the Classically
Possible Maximum Value of .
THE QUANTUM GAME 20

SOME OTHER INTERESTING RESULTS

▸ By changing the Mixed Entangled State to a combination of a

Maximally Entangled Bell State and some other state, the Quantum
Social Welfare Value can be increased upto the upper limit of 16.5

▸ By tweaking the utility boxes, it is possible to add further

complimentary marginal terms into the payoff functions — this results in
shifting the individual payoffs of the players (at both classical and
quantum levels) without affecting the social values. Hence, any
particular classical equilibrium can be overpowered.
RESULTS 21

SCOPE FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

▸ It remains to study whether, similar to Pure Entangled States, every

Mixed Entangled State can be used as QSWA for some Bayesian Game.

▸ Interesting strategies can be devised if instead of maximising simply the

sum of their payoffs, the players aimed to maximise a linear
combination of their payoffs. Antisocial Welfare Advice corresponds to
the case when players want to maximise the difference of their payoffs.
FURTHER READING 22

RELEVANT LITERATURE
‣ John F. Nash. “Equilibrium points in n-person games”. In: Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences 36.1 (1950), pp. 48–49

‣ John C. Harsanyi. “Games with Incomplete Information Played by ”Bayesian” Players, I-III.
Part II. Bayesian Equilibrium Points”. In: Management Science 14.5 (1968), pp. 320–334.

‣ Noah Linden Nicolas Brunner. “Bell nonlocality and Bayesian game theory”. In: Nature
Communications 4 (2013), p. 2057. eprint: hep-ph/9609357.

‣ Anna Pappa et al. “Nonlocality and Conflicting Interest Games”. In: Physical Review
Letters (Aug. 2014).

‣ John F. Clauser et al. “Proposed Experiment to Test Local Hidden-Variable Theories”. In:
Phys. Rev. Lett. 23 (15 Oct. 1969), pp. 880–884.

‣ Arup Roy et al. “Nonlocal correlations: Fair and Unfair Strategies in Conflicting Bayesian
Game”. In: Physical Review A 94 (Jan. 2016)

‣ Daniel Collins and Nicolas Gisin. “A Relevant Two Qubit Bell Inequality Inequivalent to the
CHSH Inequality”. In: Journal of Physics A General Physics 37 (June 2003).
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN THE FULL
PAPER, DROP ME AN EMAIL AT
ARITRAB@IITK.AC.IN

THANK YOU