Strong parallel repetition for free entangled games, with any number of players

TL;DR

This paper proves a strong parallel repetition theorem for multi-player free entangled games, showing that the entangled value decreases exponentially with repetitions, and extends previous results to more players and quantum outputs.

Contribution

It introduces the first parallel repetition theorem for multi-player entangled free games, applicable to any number of players and quantum outputs, with optimal or near-optimal bounds.

Findings

Entangled value decreases exponentially with repetitions.

The theorem applies to any number of players and quantum outputs.

No dependence on input/output alphabet size for entangled games.

Abstract

We present a strong parallel repetition theorem for the entangled value of multi-player, one-round free games (games where the inputs come from a product distribution). Our result is the first parallel repetition theorem for entangled games involving more than two players. Furthermore, our theorem applies to games where the players are allowed to output (possibly entangled) quantum states as answers. More specifically, let $G$ be a $k$-player free game, with entangled value $\mathrm{val}^*(G) = 1 - \epsilon$. We show that the entangled value of the $n$-fold repetition of $G$, $\mathrm{val}^*(G^{\otimes n})$, is at most $(1 - \epsilon)^{\Omega(n/k^2)}$. In the traditional setting of $k=2$ players, our parallel repetition theorem is optimal in terms of its dependence on $\epsilon$ and $n$. For an arbitrary number of players, our result is nearly optimal: for all $k$, we exhibit a $k$-player free game $G$ and $n > 1$ such that $\mathrm{val}^*(G^{\otimes n}) \geq \mathrm{val}^*(G)^{n/k}$. Hence, exponent of the repeated game value cannot be improved beyond $\Omega(n/k)$. Our parallel repetition theorem improves on the prior results of [Jain, et al. 2014] and [Chailloux, Scarpa 2014] in a number of ways: (1) our theorem applies to a larger class of games (arbitrary number of players, quantum outputs); (2) we demonstrate that strong parallel repetition holds for the entangled value of free games: i.e., the base of the repeated game value is $1 - \epsilon$, rather than $1 - \epsilon^2$; and (3) there is no dependence of the repeated game value on the input and output alphabets of $G$. In contrast, it is known that the repeated game value of classical free games must depend on the output size. Thus our results demonstrate a seperation between the behavior of entangled games and classical games.