English

Computing the smallest fixed point of order-preserving nonexpansive mappings arising in positive stochastic games and static analysis of programs

Optimization and Control 2014-02-04 v4

Abstract

The problem of computing the smallest fixed point of an order-preserving map arises in the study of zero-sum positive stochastic games. It also arises in static analysis of programs by abstract interpretation. In this context, the discount rate may be negative. We characterize the minimality of a fixed point in terms of the nonlinear spectral radius of a certain semidifferential. We apply this characterization to design a policy iteration algorithm, which applies to the case of finite state and action spaces. The algorithm returns a locally minimal fixed point, which turns out to be globally minimal when the discount rate is nonnegative.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0806.1160,
  title  = {Computing the smallest fixed point of order-preserving nonexpansive mappings arising in positive stochastic games and static analysis of programs},
  author = {Assalé Adjé and Stéphane Gaubert and Eric Goubault},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0806.1160},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

26 pages, 3 figures. We add new results, improvements and two examples of positive stochastic games. Note that an initial version of the paper has appeared in the proceedings of the Eighteenth International Symposium on Mathematical Theory of Networks and Systems (MTNS2008), Blacksburg, Virginia, July 2008