Quantum proof systems for iterated exponential time, and beyond

We show that any language solvable in nondeterministic time exp( exp(⋯exp(n))), where the number of iterated exponentials is an arbitrary function R(n), can be decided by a multiprover interactive proof system with a classical polynomial-time verifier and a constant number of quantum entangled provers, with completeness 1 and soundness 1 − exp(−Cexp(⋯exp(n))), where the number of iterated exponentials is R(n)−1 and C>0 is a universal constant. The result was previously known for R=1 and R=2; we obtain it for any time-constructible function R. The result is based on a compression technique for interactive proof systems with entangled provers that significantly simplifies and strengthens a protocol compression result of Ji (STOC’17). As a separate consequence of this technique we obtain a different proof of Slofstra’s recent result on the uncomputability of the entangled value of multiprover games (Forum of Mathematics, Pi 2019). Finally, we show that even minor improvements to our compression result would yield remarkable consequences in computational complexity theory and the foundations of quantum mechanics: first, it would imply that the class MIP* contains all computable languages; second, it would provide a negative resolution to a multipartite version of Tsirelson’s problem on the relation between the commuting operator and tensor product models for quantum correlations.