"Link Between Quantum Physics and Game Theory" by the University of Bristol (12 July 2013) and the journal Nature Communications (03 July 2013) ssg: Ths is a deep connection, like baseball, with more to come (once we get the mess untangled). Bristol, UK. A deep link between two seemingly unconnected areas of modern science has been discovered by researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Geneva. Game theory — which is used today in a wide range of areas such as economics, social sciences, biology and philosophy — gives a mathematical framework for describing a situation of conflict or cooperation between intelligent rational players. The central goal is to predict the outcome of the process. In the early 1950s, John Nash showed that the strategies adopted by the players form an equilibrium point (so-called Nash equilibrium) for which none of the players has any incentive to change strategy. Quantum mechanics, the theory describing the physics of small objects such as particles and atoms, predicts a vast range of astonishing and often strikingly counter-intuitive phenomena, such as quantum nonlocality. In the 1960s, John Stewart Bell demonstrated that the predictions of quantum mechanics are incompatible with the principle of locality, that is, the fact that an object can be influenced directly only by its immediate surroundings and not by distant events. In particular, when remote observers perform measurements on a pair of entangled quantum particles, such as photons, the results of these measurements are highly correlated. In fact, these correlations are so strong that they cannot be explained by any physical theory respecting the principle of locality. Hence quantum mechanics is a nonlocal theory, and the fact that Nature is nonlocal has been confirmed in numerous experiments. In a paper published in Nature Communications, Dr Brunner and Professor Linden showed that the two above subjects are in fact deeply connected with the same concepts appearing in both fields. Click on the article title to read the complete text at the University of Bristol and review the research paper (cf. below). "Connection between Bell nonlocality and Bayesian game theory." Nicolas Brunner and Noah Linden. Nature Communications 2013; 4(2057). doi:10.1038/ncomms3057 "Abstract" In 1964, Bell discovered that quantum mechanics is a nonlocal theory. Three years later, in a seemingly unconnected development, Harsanyi introduced the concept of Bayesian games. Here we show that, in fact, there is a deep connection between Bell nonlocality and Bayesian games, and that the same concepts appear in both fields. This link offers interesting possibilities for Bayesian games, namely of allowing the players to receive advice in the form of nonlocal correlations, for instance using entangled quantum particles or more general no-signalling boxes. This will lead to novel joint strategies, impossible to achieve classically. We characterize games for which nonlocal resources offer a genuine advantage over classical ones. Moreover, some of these strategies represent equilibrium points, leading to the notion of quantum/no-signalling Nash equilibrium. Finally, we describe new types of question in the study of nonlocality, namely the consideration of nonlocal advantage given a set of Bell expressions. nature/ncomms/2013/130703/ncomms3057/full/ncomms3057.html#affil-auth #news #science #scienceeveryday #sciencesunday #physics #physicalsciences #theoretical physics #mathematics #quantummechanics #nonlocaltheory #bayesiangames #nonlocalcorrelations #entanglement #nashequilibrium #nonlocality #bellexpressions #research #abstract #sharongaughan
Posted on: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 15:05:01 +0000
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