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We examine global non-asymptotic convergence properties of policy gradient methods for multi-agent reinforcement learning (RL) problems in Markov potential games (MPG). To learn a Nash equilibrium of an MPG in which the size of state space…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-08 Dongsheng Ding , Chen-Yu Wei , Kaiqing Zhang , Mihailo R. Jovanović

In this work, we develop new optimization algorithms that use approximate second-order information combined with the gradient regularization technique to achieve fast global convergence rates for both convex and non-convex objectives. The…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-06-17 Andrei Semenov , Martin Jaggi , Nikita Doikov

Stochastic gradient methods (SGMs) have been extensively used for solving stochastic problems or large-scale machine learning problems. Recent works employ various techniques to improve the convergence rate of SGMs for both convex and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-05-02 Yangyang Xu , Yibo Xu

Autonomous systems often operate in multi-agent settings and need to make concurrent, strategic decisions, typically in uncertain environments. Verification and control problems for these systems can be tackled with concurrent stochastic…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2026-01-22 Angel Y. He , David Parker

This paper proposes a constrained stochastic successive convex approximation (CSSCA) algorithm to find a stationary point for a general non-convex stochastic optimization problem, whose objective and constraint functions are non-convex and…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2019-09-04 An Liu , Vincent Lau , Borna Kananian

We contribute the first provable guarantees of global convergence to Nash equilibria (NE) in two-player zero-sum convex Markov games (cMGs) by using independent policy gradient methods. Convex Markov games, recently defined by Gemp et al.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-06-23 Fivos Kalogiannis , Emmanouil-Vasileios Vlatakis-Gkaragkounis , Ian Gemp , Georgios Piliouras

We consider randomized block coordinate stochastic mirror descent (RBSMD) methods for solving high-dimensional stochastic optimization problems with strongly convex objective functions. Our goal is to develop RBSMD schemes that achieve a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-02-15 Nahidsadat Majlesinasab , Farzad Yousefian , Arash Pourhabib

Stochastic gradient optimization methods are broadly used to minimize non-convex smooth objective functions, for instance when training deep neural networks. However, theoretical guarantees on the asymptotic behaviour of these methods…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-07-17 Jean-Baptiste Fest , Audrey Repetti , Emilie Chouzenoux

Zero-sum Markov Games (MGs) has been an efficient framework for multi-agent systems and robust control, wherein a minimax problem is constructed to solve the equilibrium policies. At present, this formulation is well studied under tabular…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-06 Yangang Ren , Yao Lyu , Wenxuan Wang , Shengbo Eben Li , Zeyang Li , Jingliang Duan

In this paper, we present new stochastic methods for solving two important classes of nonconvex optimization problems. We first introduce a randomized accelerated proximal gradient (RapGrad) method for solving a class of nonconvex…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-08-20 Guanghui Lan , Yu Yang

In this paper, we study the performance of a large family of SGD variants in the smooth nonconvex regime. To this end, we propose a generic and flexible assumption capable of accurate modeling of the second moment of the stochastic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-06-15 Zhize Li , Peter Richtárik

Low-rank and nonsmooth matrix optimization problems capture many fundamental tasks in statistics and machine learning. While significant progress has been made in recent years in developing efficient methods for \textit{smooth} low-rank…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-08 Dan Garber , Atara Kaplan

Zero-sum Markov Stackelberg games can be used to model myriad problems, in domains ranging from economics to human robot interaction. In this paper, we develop policy gradient methods that solve these games in continuous state and action…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-01-24 Denizalp Goktas , Arjun Prakash , Amy Greenwald

We study fundamental limits of first-order stochastic optimization in a range of nonconvex settings, including L-smooth functions satisfying Quasar-Convexity (QC), Quadratic Growth (QG), and Restricted Secant Inequalities (RSI). While the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-06-03 El Mehdi Saad , Wei-Cheng Lee , Francesco Orabona

We introduce a new algorithm for the numerical computation of Nash equilibria of competitive two-player games. Our method is a natural generalization of gradient descent to the two-player setting where the update is given by the Nash…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-07-02 Florian Schäfer , Anima Anandkumar

The vast majority of convergence rates analysis for stochastic gradient methods in the literature focus on convergence in expectation, whereas trajectory-wise almost sure convergence is clearly important to ensure that any instantiation of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-12 Jun Liu , Ye Yuan

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a promising method for solving large-scale inverse problems, due to its excellent scalability with respect to data size. In this work, we analyze a new data-driven regularized stochastic gradient descent…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2024-09-30 Zehui Zhou

A number of optimization approaches have been proposed for optimizing nonconvex objectives (e.g. deep learning models), such as batch gradient descent, stochastic gradient descent and stochastic variance reduced gradient descent. Theory…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-15 Jia Bi , Steve R. Gunn

In stochastic games with incomplete information, the uncertainty is evoked by the lack of knowledge about a player's own and the other players' types, i.e. the utility function and the policy space, and also the inherent stochasticity of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-21 Hannes Eriksson , Debabrota Basu , Mina Alibeigi , Christos Dimitrakakis

We identify and analyze a fundamental limitation of the classical projected subgradient method in nonsmooth convex optimization: the inevitable failure caused by the absence of valid subgradients at boundary points. We show that, under…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-17 Zhihan Zhu , Yanhao Zhang , Yong Xia