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Entropy regularization has been widely used in policy optimization algorithms to enhance exploration and the robustness of the optimal control; however it also introduces an additional regularization bias. This work quantifies the impact of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-03-25 Deven Sethi , David Šiška , Yufei Zhang

Policy gradient algorithms are widely used in reinforcement learning and belong to the class of approximate dynamic programming methods. This paper studies two key policy gradient algorithms, the Natural Policy Gradient and the Gauss-Newton…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-05-11 Bowen Song , Sebastien Gros , Andrea Iannelli

The incremental gradient method is a prominent algorithm for minimizing a finite sum of smooth convex functions, used in many contexts including large-scale data processing applications and distributed optimization over networks. It is a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-02-09 Mert Gürbüzbalaban , Asuman Ozdaglar , Pablo Parrilo

Traditional policy gradient methods are fundamentally flawed. Natural gradients converge quicker and better, forming the foundation of contemporary Reinforcement Learning such as Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO) and Proximal Policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-07 W. J. A. van Heeswijk

Policy gradient methods are a powerful family of reinforcement learning algorithms for continuous control that optimize a policy directly. However, standard first-order methods often converge slowly. Second-order methods can accelerate…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-11-05 Amirreza Valaei , Arash Bahari Kordabad , Sadegh Soudjani

We give algorithms for designing near-optimal sparse controllers using policy gradient with applications to control of systems corrupted by multiplicative noise, which is increasingly important in emerging complex dynamical networks.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-06-03 Benjamin Gravell , Yi Guo , Tyler Summers

We study the use of policy gradient algorithms to optimize over a class of generalized Thompson sampling policies. Our central insight is to view the posterior parameter sampled by Thompson sampling as a kind of pseudo-action. Policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-01 Seungki Min , Ciamac C. Moallemi , Daniel J. Russo

We study the existing algorithms that solve the multidimensional martingale optimal transport. Then we provide a new algorithm based on entropic regularization and Newton's method. Then we provide theoretical convergence rate results and we…

Probability · Mathematics 2018-12-31 Hadrien De March

In this work, we propose an optimization algorithm which we call norm-adapted gradient descent. This algorithm is similar to other gradient-based optimization algorithms like Adam or Adagrad in that it adapts the learning rate of stochastic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-14 David Sprunger

We study the global convergence of a Fisher-Rao policy gradient flow for infinite-horizon entropy-regularised Markov decision processes with Polish state and action space. The flow is a continuous-time analogue of a policy mirror descent…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-06-09 Bekzhan Kerimkulov , James-Michael Leahy , David Siska , Lukasz Szpruch , Yufei Zhang

Dual descent methods are commonly used to solve network optimization problems because their implementation can be distributed through the network. However, their convergence rates are typically very slow. This paper introduces a family of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2011-04-07 M. Zargham , A. Ribeiro , A. Jadbabaie , A. Ozdaglar

We study the problem of minimizing a sum of convex objective functions where the components of the objective are available at different nodes of a network and nodes are allowed to only communicate with their neighbors. The use of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-04-24 Aryan Mokhtari , Qing Ling , Alejandro Ribeiro

The goal of policy gradient approaches is to find a policy in a given class of policies which maximizes the expected return. Given a differentiable model of the policy, we want to apply a gradient-ascent technique to reach a local optimum.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-13 Mattis Manfred Kämmerer

In this paper, a globally convergent Newton-type proximal gradient method is developed for composite multi-objective optimization problems where each objective function can be represented as the sum of a smooth function and a nonsmooth…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-10-25 Md Abu Talhamainuddin Ansary

We propose networked policy gradient play for solving Markov potential games with continuous and/or discrete state-action pairs. During the game, agents use parametrized and differentiable policies that depend on the current state and the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-10-02 Sarper Aydin , Ceyhun Eksin

We consider infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision processes and study the convergence rates of the natural policy gradient (NPG) and the Q-NPG methods with the log-linear policy class. Using the compatible function approximation…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-22 Rui Yuan , Simon S. Du , Robert M. Gower , Alessandro Lazaric , Lin Xiao

The infinite horizon setting is widely adopted for problems of reinforcement learning (RL). These invariably result in stationary policies that are optimal. In many situations, finite horizon control problems are of interest and for such…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-21 Soumyajit Guin , Shalabh Bhatnagar

This paper studies policy optimization algorithms for multi-agent reinforcement learning. We begin by proposing an algorithm framework for two-player zero-sum Markov Games in the full-information setting, where each iteration consists of a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-26 Runyu Zhang , Qinghua Liu , Huan Wang , Caiming Xiong , Na Li , Yu Bai

Large scale optimization problems are ubiquitous in machine learning and data analysis and there is a plethora of algorithms for solving such problems. Many of these algorithms employ sub-sampling, as a way to either speed up the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-02-29 Farbod Roosta-Khorasani , Michael W. Mahoney

We consider minimization of a sum of convex objective functions where the components of the objective are available at different nodes of a network and nodes are allowed to only communicate with their neighbors. The use of distributed…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2014-12-12 Aryan Mokhtari , Qing Ling , Alejandro Ribeiro