Playing Games with Schrödinger

Game theory considers systems of players that choose a strategy to achieve some goal, such as higher profits or better survival chances. When the number of players is very large, researchers will often model the game with a mean-field approach that averages over the behavior of all players. New theoretical work couches mean-field game theory in terms of the Schrödinger equation, which quantum physicists have been playing with for nearly a century. Thus the mathematical tools developed to describe quantum systems might now bring insights to mean-field games.