Nash equilibria and other strategic behaviors emerge naturally from the physical interference of quantum particles.
April 23, 2026
Original Paper
Native quantum games from interacting discrete-time quantum walks
arXiv · 2604.20455
The Takeaway
Quantum walks demonstrate that competition and cooperation are fundamental properties of physics. Strategic game-theoretic behavior can be observed in the ways these quantum walkers interfere with one another. This discovery suggests that game theory is not just a human or biological phenomenon but a physical law. It collapses the distinction between decision-making and particle dynamics. This could lead to a new era of quantum computing where chips solve social and economic problems through natural physical evolution.
From the abstract
We study how strategic interaction can arise from controlled quantum dynamics rather than being imposed as an external mathematical structure. We introduce a class of interaction-defined quantum games in which players are represented by distinguishable quantum walkers, strategies correspond to local coin operations, and payoffs are defined as expectation values of physical observables. Using interacting discrete-time quantum walks as a concrete platform, we demonstrate numerically that competiti