Quantum computation and pseudo-telepathic games

TL;DR

This paper explains how quantum entanglement enables new correlations that improve information processing and introduces pseudo-telepathic games to illustrate the fundamental differences between classical and quantum correlations.

Contribution

It clarifies the role of entanglement in quantum algorithms and introduces pseudo-telepathic games as a novel way to demonstrate quantum advantage over classical strategies.

Findings

Quantum entanglement allows correlations not possible classically.

Quantum algorithms can outperform classical ones for specific problems.

Pseudo-telepathic games showcase the power of quantum correlations.

Abstract

A quantum algorithm succeeds not because the superposition principle allows 'the computation of all values of a function at once' via 'quantum parallelism,' but rather because the structure of a quantum state space allows new sorts of correlations associated with entanglement, with new possibilities for information-processing transformations between correlations, that are not possible in a classical state space. I illustrate this with an elementary example of a problem for which a quantum algorithm is more efficient than any classical algorithm. I also introduce the notion of 'pseudo-telepathic' games and show how the difference between classical and quantum correlations plays a similar role here for games that can be won by quantum players exploiting entanglement, but not by classical players whose only allowed common resource consists of shared strings of random numbers (common causes of the players' correlated responses in a game).