English

Oscillating solutions to the mean-field Langevin descent-ascent flow

Optimization and Control 2026-04-14 v1 Probability

Abstract

We present a counterexample to the statement of convergence of the mean-field Langevin descent-ascent flow on R2\mathbb{R}^2. We consider payoff functions that are shaped as a double well in each coordinate, and for which the deterministic dynamics admits a limit cycle. When the coupling between the two coordinates is sufficiently strong and the entropic regularization sufficiently small, we show that the mean-field dynamics remains close to this cyclic behavior, and in particular, does not converge.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.11134,
  title  = {Oscillating solutions to the mean-field Langevin descent-ascent flow},
  author = {Jean-Christophe Mourrat and Loucas Pillaud-Vivien},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.11134},
  year   = {2026}
}

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15 pages