Nonlocal Games as Cross-Platform Quantum Benchmarks: Exceeding unconditional classical bounds on trapped-ion processors

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 18 Mar 2026] Nonlocal Games as Cross-Platform Quantum Benchmarks: Exceeding unconditional classical bounds on trapped-ion processors Anton T. Than, Jim Furches, Debopriyo Biswas, Sarah Chehade, Kathleen Hamilton, Bahaa Harraz, Xingxin Liu, De Luo, Keqin Yan, Yichao Yu, Vivian Ni Zhang, Liudmila A. Zhukas, Alaina M. Green, Alexander Kozhanov, Christopher Monroe, Crystal Noel, Carlos Ortiz Marrero, Norbert M. Linke Nonlocal games provide application-level benchmarks for quantum hardware whose classical performance bounds are information-theoretic, holding against all classical strategies regardless of computational resources. We implement a 14-vertex graph coloring game, the smallest graph exhibiting a quantum-classical separation for this game type, on four trapped-ion quantum processors across three institutions. One system achieved a win rate that surpasses the classical bound with statistical significance, marking the first violation of a classical bound in a graph coloring nonlocal game on quantum hardware. The remaining systems achieved win rates comparable to the best superconducting processors evaluated on the same game, further illustrating the potential of nonlocal games as cross-architecture quantum benchmarks. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Report number: PNNL-SA-221109 Cite as: arXiv:2603.18323 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2603.18323v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.18323 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Carlos Ortiz Marrero [view email] [v1] Wed, 18 Mar 2026 22:14:12 UTC (158 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-03 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)