Related papers: A Mean Field Approach for Optimization in Particle…

We consider deterministic Markov decision processes (MDPs) and apply max-plus algebra tools to approximate the value iteration algorithm by a smaller-dimensional iteration based on a representation on dictionaries of value functions. The…

Markov decision processes (MDPs) and simple stochastic games (SSGs) provide a rich mathematical framework to study many important problems related to probabilistic systems. MDPs and SSGs with finite-horizon objectives, where the goal is to…

Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) are notably more complex to solve than standard MDPs due to the absence of universally optimal policies across all initial state distributions. This necessitates re-solving the CMDP whenever the…

We study a Markov decision problem in which the state space is the set of finite marked point configurations in the plane, the actions represent thinnings, the reward is proportional to the mark sum which is discounted over time, and the…

Canonical models of Markov decision processes (MDPs) usually consider geometric discounting based on a constant discount factor. While this standard modeling approach has led to many elegant results, some recent studies indicate the…

Markov decision processes (MDP) are finite-state systems with both strategic and probabilistic choices. After fixing a strategy, an MDP produces a sequence of probability distributions over states. The sequence is eventually synchronizing…

We investigate propagation of chaos for mean field Markov Decision Process with common noise (CMKV-MDP), and when the optimization is performed over randomized open-loop controls on infinite horizon. We first state a rate of convergence of…

We present metrics for measuring the similarity of states in a finite Markov decision process (MDP). The formulation of our metrics is based on the notion of bisimulation for MDPs, with an aim towards solving discounted infinite horizon…

This paper studies a large number of homogeneous Markov decision processes where the transition probabilities and costs are coupled in the empirical distribution of states (also called mean-field). The state of each process is not known to…

We consider the problem of finding the best memoryless stochastic policy for an infinite-horizon partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) with finite state and action spaces with respect to either the discounted or mean reward…

We revisit the finite time analysis of policy gradient methods in the one of the simplest settings: finite state and action MDPs with a policy class consisting of all stochastic policies and with exact gradient evaluations. There has been…

We consider synthesis of control policies that maximize the probability of satisfying given temporal logic specifications in unknown, stochastic environments. We model the interaction between the system and its environment as a Markov…

We investigate the classical active pure exploration problem in Markov Decision Processes, where the agent sequentially selects actions and, from the resulting system trajectory, aims at identifying the best policy as fast as possible. We…

We study infinite-horizon Discounted Markov Decision Processes (DMDPs) under a generative model. Motivated by the Algorithm with Advice framework Mitzenmacher and Vassilvitskii 2022, we propose a novel framework to investigate how a…

In this work, we investigate the optimal control problem for continuous-time Markov decision processes with the random impact of the environment. We provide conditions to show the existence of optimal controls under finite-horizon criteria.…

We consider approximate dynamic programming for the infinite-horizon stationary $\gamma$-discounted optimal control problem formalized by Markov Decision Processes. While in the exact case it is known that there always exists an optimal…

We study regret minimization for infinite-horizon average-reward Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) under cost constraints. We start by designing a policy optimization algorithm with carefully designed action-value estimator and bonus term,…

The statement of the mean field approximation theorem in the mean field theory of Markov processes particularly targets the behaviour of population processes with an unbounded number of agents. However, in most real-world engineering…

We propose policy gradient algorithms for robust infinite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) with non-rectangular uncertainty sets, thereby addressing an open challenge in the robust MDP literature. Indeed, uncertainty sets that…

In this paper, we show how a simulated Markov decision process (MDP) built by the so-called \emph{baseline} policies, can be used to compute a different policy, namely the \emph{simulated optimal} policy, for which the performance of this…