QUANTUM GAMES. Star Trek's Captain Picard (fictional commander of the USS Enterprise) and Q (his mischievous, all-powerful adversary) are beamed onto the pages of Physical Review Letters for the first time to engage in a hypothetical contest that represents the extension of game theory to the quantum world. With these characters, physicist David Meyer of the math department (Project in Geometry and Physics) at UC-San Diego (619- 534-5524; dmeyer@chonji.ucsd.edu) illustrates how playing nanoscopic versions of familiar games with atoms (or any other object which obeys the peculiar rules of quantum mechanics) may reveal new information-processing tasks (beyond already known ones) that quantum computers would perform more efficiently than classical computers. In Meyer's scenario, Q promises Picard that he will help get the Enterprise out of its latest emergency if Picard wins a game. Specifically, the contest amounts to a quantum version of a penny- flipping game, in which an atomic nucleus with "spin-up" and "spin-down" states takes the place of the familiar zinc coin with heads and tails. Through this game, Meyer shows that players like Q who exploit the unique properties of quantum-mechanical objects (such as the ability to put it in a simultaneous combination or "superposition" of two states) enjoy a distinct advantage over those who (like Picard) just treat the objects like everyday items such as balls or coins (which can only be in one state or the other). Through his use of superpositions, Q manipulates the nucleus in such a way that ensures he always wins, even though the chances of winning the classical version of the game are only 50-50. Such a contest, Meyer points out, can be easily demonstrated with the rudimentary quantum computers that now exist (Updates 250, 310, 367), and may provide insights on such things as quantum-error correction (Update 388). (Meyer, Physical Review Letters, 1 February 1999; as usual, journalists can obtain the article from AIP Public Information.)