Quantum Advantage in Multi Agent Reinforcement Learning
Not on the map. Why?
Abstract (arXiv)
We present an empirical evaluation of quantum entanglement in agent coordination within quantum multi agent reinforcement learning (QMARL). While QMARL has attracted growing interest recently, most prior work evaluates quantum policies without provable baselines, making it impossible to rigorously distinguish quantum advantage from algorithmic coincidence. We address this directly by evaluating a decentralized QMARL framework with variational quantum circuit (VQC) actors with shared entangled states. In the CHSH game, which has a mathematically proven classical performance ceiling of 0.75 win rate, we show that entangled QMARL agents approach the Tsirelson limit of 0.854, providing clear evidence of their quantum advantage. We show that unentangled quantum circuits match the classical baseline, confirming that entanglement and not the quantum circuit itself is the active coordination mechanism. We also explore the effect of specific entanglement structures, as some Bell states enable coordination gains while others actively harm performance. On cooperative navigation (CoopNav), QMARL without entanglement achieves ~2× improvement in success rate over classical MAA2C (~0.85 versus ~0.40), with the hybrid configuration, quantum actor paired with a classical centralised critic, outperforming both fully classical and fully quantum solutions. We present our experimental analysis and discuss future work.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 14 of its 28 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 14 May 2026.
Builds on
14 of 28 references.
References · 14
- 2016Asynchronous Methods for Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 2,258
- 2017Multi-Agent Actor-Critic for Mixed Cooperative-Competitive Environmentscited by 1,558
- 2016Learning to Communicate with Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 575
- 2017Value-Decomposition Networks For Cooperative Multi-Agent Learningcited by 503
- 2013The Complexity of Decentralized Control of Markov Decision Processescited by 231
- 2018A Survey and Critique of Multiagent Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 177
- 2022Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning is a Sequence Modeling Problemcited by 155
- 2019A Review of Cooperative Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 147
- 2021Parametrized quantum policies for reinforcement learningcited by 90
- 2020TensorFlow Quantum: A Software Framework for Quantum Machine Learningcited by 72
- 2022Quantum Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning via Variational Quantum Circuit Designcited by 25
- 2022Quantum Multi-Agent Meta Reinforcement Learningcited by 23
Built on by
Not cited yet.
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026Quantum entanglement provides a competitive advantage in adversarial games
- 2026Emergent Cooperation in Quantum Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Using Communication
- 2024Quantum Advantage Actor-Critic for Reinforcement Learning
- 2026MADQRL: Distributed Quantum Reinforcement Learning Framework for Multi-Agent Environments
- 2024Quantum framework for Reinforcement Learning: Integrating Markov decision process, quantum arithmetic, and trajectory search
- 2024Architectural Influence on Variational Quantum Circuits in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning: Evolutionary Strategies for Optimization
- 2025Dissecting Quantum Reinforcement Learning: A Systematic Evaluation of Key Components
- 2024Quantum-Train-Based Distributed Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning