Entanglement in the Quantum Volunteer's Dilemma
Summarize this article with:
Quantum Physics arXiv:2606.08227 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 6 Jun 2026] Title:Entanglement in the Quantum Volunteer's Dilemma Authors:Noah Dane Hebdon, Dax Enshan Koh View a PDF of the paper titled Entanglement in the Quantum Volunteer's Dilemma, by Noah Dane Hebdon and 1 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:A well-known model in game theory, the Volunteer's Dilemma describes a group of $n$ players who decide whether to volunteer for a collective benefit at a personal cost, or to abstain and risk forfeiting the benefit altogether. A quantum version of this dilemma, developed within the Eisert-Wilkens-Lewenstein framework, allows each player to manipulate one qubit of a shared entangled state, leading to symmetric Nash equilibria with higher expected payoffs than in the classical game. Existing analyses, however, assume maximal entanglement. Within the same framework, we introduce a generalized Quantum Volunteer's Dilemma with a tunable entanglement parameter $\gamma$ and study the extent to which equilibrium behavior depends on the level of entanglement. We derive explicit conditions relating $\gamma$, the number of players, and the players' strategies under which symmetric Nash equilibria exist, focusing on two canonical strategy profiles: one for $2\leq n\leq 9$, and one for even $n$. We find that maximal entanglement is not required to sustain symmetric equilibria. Instead, equilibrium behavior persists above a threshold value, which we compute analytically in both cases. We also demonstrate that the threshold value directly depends on system size. This characterization is directly relevant for implementations on resource-constrained quantum devices, where entanglement is inherently limited. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Computer Science and Game Theory (cs.GT); Theoretical Economics (econ.TH); Mathematical Physics (math-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2606.08227 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2606.08227v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.08227 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Noah Hebdon [view email] [v1] Sat, 6 Jun 2026 15:31:16 UTC (250 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Entanglement in the Quantum Volunteer's Dilemma, by Noah Dane Hebdon and 1 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-06 Change to browse by: cs cs.GT econ econ.TH math math-ph math.MP 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?) 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?)