Centipedes Leap into the Quantum Realm

Quantum Physics arXiv:2511.20690 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 21 Nov 2025] Title:Centipedes Leap into the Quantum Realm Authors:Kaytki Chakankar, Xinhui Tang, Yiguo Zhang View a PDF of the paper titled Centipedes Leap into the Quantum Realm, by Kaytki Chakankar and 2 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:The centipede game is a two-player non-zero-sum game. Each turn, a player can choose whether they want to take or pass a growing reward. The classical, rational solution of this game shows defection in the first round, when in reality, players cooperate much more often. Inspired by prior work employing quantum strategies in the prisoners dilemma, we showed that when similar quantum mechanics principles are applied to the centipede game, it leads to two new quantum Nash equilibria that are superior to the classical solution. Furthermore, by implementing our algorithm on Qiskit, we confirmed that leveraging quantum strategies, rather than strategies like backward induction, to solve the centipede game provided better payoffs for both players and more accurately modeled the games real-life outcomes. Ultimately, we propose a generalized conjecture for similarly structured quantum games. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2511.20690 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2511.20690v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2511.20690 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Yiguo Zhang [view email] [v1] Fri, 21 Nov 2025 21:30:02 UTC (278 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Centipedes Leap into the Quantum Realm, by Kaytki Chakankar and 2 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2025-11 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)