Quantum Correlated Equilibria in Classical Complete Information Games

Abstract: We study the scenario where the players of a classical complete information game initially share an entangled pure quantum state. Each player may perform arbitrary local operations on his own qubits, but no direct communication is allowed. In this framework, we define the concept of quantum correlated equilibrium (QCE) for both normal and extensive form games of complete information. We show that in a normal form game, any outcome distribution implementable by a QCE can also be implemented by a classical correlated equilibrium (CE). We prove that the converse is surprisingly false: we give an example of an outcome distribution of a normal form game which is implementably by a CE, yet we prove that in any attempted quantum protocol beginning with a partition of a pure quantum state, at least one of the players will have incentive to deviate. We extend our analysis to extensive form games, and find that the relation between classical and quantum correlated equilibria becomes less clear. We compare the outcome distributions implementable in our quantum model to those implementable by a classical extensive form correlated equilibrium (EFCE). For example, we show that there exists an extensive form complete information game and a distribution of outcomes which can be implemented by a QCE but not by any EFCE, in contrast to the result for normal form games. We also consider the concept of an immediate-revelation extensive form correlated equilibrium (IR-EFCE) and compare the power of IR-EFCE to EFCE and to QCE.