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Policy gradient methods are widely used in reinforcement learning. Yet, the nonconvexity of policy optimization poses significant challenges in understanding the global convergence of policy gradient methods. For a class of finite-horizon…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-10 Xin Chen , Yifan Hu , Minda Zhao

The paper deals with finite-state Markov decision processes (MDPs) with integer weights assigned to each state-action pair. New algorithms are presented to classify end components according to their limiting behavior with respect to the…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2018-05-01 Christel Baier , Nathalie Bertrand , Clemens Dubslaff , Daniel Gburek , Ocan Sankur

Recent research in decision theoretic planning has focussed on making the solution of Markov decision processes (MDPs) more feasible. We develop a family of algorithms for structured reachability analysis of MDPs that are suitable when an…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-04-24 Craig Boutilier , Ronen I. Brafman , Christopher W. Geib

We consider online reinforcement learning (RL) in episodic Markov decision processes (MDPs) under the linear $q^\pi$-realizability assumption, where it is assumed that the action-values of all policies can be expressed as linear functions…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-21 Gellért Weisz , András György , Csaba Szepesvári

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a popular model for performance analysis and optimization of stochastic systems. The parameters of stochastic behavior of MDPs are estimates from empirical observations of a system; their values are not…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-10-26 Dimitri Scheftelowitsch , Peter Buchholz , Vahid Hashemi , Holger Hermanns

In this paper, we propose a new policy iteration algorithm to compute the value function and the optimal controls of continuous time stochastic control problems. The algorithm relies on successive approximations using linear-quadratic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-09-09 Dylan Possamaï , Ludovic Tangpi

Memoryless and finite-memory policies offer a practical alternative for solving partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs), as they operate directly in the output space rather than in the high-dimensional belief space. However,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-15 Roy van Zuijlen , Duarte Antunes

Algorithms developed under stationary Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) often face challenges in non-stationary environments, and infinite-horizon formulations may not directly apply to finite-horizon tasks. To address these limitations, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-03 Zhizuo Chen , Theodore T. Allen

This paper develops a deep policy iteration method for high-dimensional finite-horizon mean-field games (MFG). We reformulate the game as a regenerative problem with deterministic cycles, which allows policy evaluation (PE), policy…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2026-05-18 Shuixin Fang , Shupeng Wang , Zhen Wu , Hui Zhang , Tao Zhou

To overcome the curse of dimensionality and curse of modeling in Dynamic Programming (DP) methods for solving classical Markov Decision Process (MDP) problems, Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms are popular. In this paper, we consider…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-11-29 Arghyadip Roy , Vivek Borkar , Abhay Karandikar , Prasanna Chaporkar

State aggregation aims to reduce the computational complexity of solving Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) while preserving the performance of the original system. A fundamental challenge lies in optimizing policies within the aggregated, or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-14 Shuo Zhao , Yongqiang Li , Yu Feng , Zhongsheng Hou , Yuanjing Feng

We consider multiple-environment Markov decision processes (MEMDP), which consist of a finite set of MDPs over the same state space, representing different scenarios of transition structure and probability. The value of a strategy is the…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2025-04-23 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Laurent Doyen , Jean-François Raskin , Ocan Sankur

We consider policy evaluation in infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision problems (MDPs) with infinite spaces. We reformulate this task a compositional stochastic program with a function-valued decision variable that belongs to a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-05-19 Alec Koppel , Garrett Warnell , Ethan Stump , Peter Stone , Alejandro Ribeiro

To overcome the curses of dimensionality and modeling of Dynamic Programming (DP) methods to solve Markov Decision Process (MDP) problems, Reinforcement Learning (RL) methods are adopted in practice. Contrary to traditional RL algorithms…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-24 Arghyadip Roy , Vivek Borkar , Abhay Karandikar , Prasanna Chaporkar

We study the general approach to accelerating the convergence of the most widely used solution method of Markov decision processes with the total expected discounted reward. Inspired by the monotone behavior of the contraction mappings in…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2008-03-28 Oleksandr Shlakhter , Chi-Guhn Lee , Dmitry Khmelev , Nasser Jaber

We consider the infinite-horizon discounted optimal control problem formalized by Markov Decision Processes. We focus on Policy Search algorithms, that compute an approximately optimal policy by following the standard Policy Iteration (PI)…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-06-04 Bruno Scherrer

This paper studies parametric Markov decision processes (pMDPs), an extension to Markov decision processes (MDPs) where transitions probabilities are described by polynomials over a finite set of parameters. Fixing values for all parameters…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2019-04-03 Tobias Winkler , Sebastian Junges , Guillermo A. Pérez , Joost-Pieter Katoen

We propose a method of approximating multivariate Gaussian probabilities using dynamic programming. We show that solving the optimization problem associated with a class of discrete-time finite horizon Markov decision processes with…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-02-08 Morgan Jones , Matthew M. Peet

This paper addresses the problem of planning under uncertainty in large Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Factored MDPs represent a complex state space using state variables and the transition model using a dynamic Bayesian network. This…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2011-06-10 C. Guestrin , D. Koller , R. Parr , S. Venkataraman

We consider Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) where the rewards are unknown and may change in an adversarial manner. We provide an algorithm that achieves state-of-the-art regret bound of $O( \sqrt{\tau (\ln|S|+\ln|A|)T}\ln(T))$, where $S$…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-28 Adrian Rivera Cardoso , He Wang , Huan Xu