Darwinism in Quantum Systems?

We find quantum mechanics playing a role in evolutionary dynamics described by the notion of an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS). An ESS being a refinement of Nash equilibrium concept is a stable strategy in an evolutionary game with replicator dynamic as the underlying process. We investigate ESSs in two and three player symmetric quantum games played by the proposed scheme of applying ′identity′ and ′Pauli spin-flip′ operators on an initial state with classical probabilities. The mixed Nash equilibrium (NE) we search for is not affected by a switchover between two forms of the game, one quantized and other classical, however it is an ESS when the game is played classically.We show no such mixed NE exists for two player games but there is a class of three player games where they do exist.Our results imply that an evolutionary approach originating with Darwin’s idea of natural selection can be used even for quantum systems indicating the possibility of evolutionary algorithms utilizing entanglement and other quantum effects.