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We study policy gradient for mean-field control in continuous time in a reinforcement learning setting. By considering randomised policies with entropy regularisation, we derive a gradient expectation representation of the value function,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-03-14 Noufel Frikha , Maximilien Germain , Mathieu Laurière , Huyên Pham , Xuanye Song

We develop a new policy gradient and actor-critic algorithm for solving mean-field control problems within a continuous time reinforcement learning setting. Our approach leverages a gradient-based representation of the value function,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-09-11 Huyên Pham , Xavier Warin

We study model-free policy learning for discrete-time mean-field control (MFC) problems with finite state space and compact action space. In contrast to the extensive literature on value-based methods for MFC, policy-based approaches remain…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-28 Matthieu Meunier , Huyên Pham , Christoph Reisinger

Policy gradient methods are reinforcement learning algorithms that adapt a parameterized policy by following a performance gradient estimate. Conventional policy gradient methods use Monte-Carlo techniques to estimate the gradient, which…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-01 Mohammad Ghavamzadeh , Yaakov Engel , Michal Valko

We study policy gradient (PG) for reinforcement learning in continuous time and space under the regularized exploratory formulation developed by Wang et al. (2020). We represent the gradient of the value function with respect to a given…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-26 Yanwei Jia , Xun Yu Zhou

This paper studies an infinite horizon optimal control problem for discrete-time linear system and quadratic criteria, both with random parameters which are independent and identically distributed with respect to time. In this general…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-03-04 Deyue Li

Despite its popularity in the reinforcement learning community, a provably convergent policy gradient method for continuous space-time control problems with nonlinear state dynamics has been elusive. This paper proposes proximal gradient…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-12-27 Christoph Reisinger , Wolfgang Stockinger , Yufei Zhang

We propose a PDE-based accelerated gradient algorithm for optimal feedback controls of McKean-Vlasov dynamics that involve mean-field interactions both in the state and action. The method exploits a forward-backward splitting approach and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-05-03 Christoph Reisinger , Wolfgang Stockinger , Yufei Zhang

We investigate reinforcement learning in the setting of Markov decision processes for a large number of exchangeable agents interacting in a mean field manner. Applications include, for example, the control of a large number of robots…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-30 René Carmona , Mathieu Laurière , Zongjun Tan

A mean-field selective optimal control problem of multipopulation dynamics via transient leadership is considered. The agents in the system are described by their spatial position and their probability of belonging to a certain population.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-06-15 Giacomo Albi , Stefano Almi , Marco Morandotti , Francesco Solombrino

The policy gradient theorem (Sutton et al., 2000) prescribes the usage of a cumulative discounted state distribution under the target policy to approximate the gradient. Most algorithms based on this theorem, in practice, break this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-08 Samuele Tosatto , Andrew Patterson , Martha White , A. Rupam Mahmood

This paper investigates the continuous-time counterpart of the Q-function for entropy-regularized mean-field control (MFC) with controlled common noise, coined as q-function by Jia and Zhou (2023) in the single agent's model. We first show…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-01 Zhenjie Ren , Xiaoli Wei , Xiang Yu , Xun Yu Zhou

Policy gradient algorithms have proven to be successful in diverse decision making and control tasks. However, these methods suffer from high sample complexity and instability issues. In this paper, we address these challenges by providing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-17 Yannis Flet-Berliac , Reda Ouhamma , Odalric-Ambrym Maillard , Philippe Preux

Reinforcement learning is a powerful tool to learn the optimal policy of possibly multiple agents by interacting with the environment. As the number of agents grow to be very large, the system can be approximated by a mean-field problem.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-08-18 Weichen Wang , Jiequn Han , Zhuoran Yang , Zhaoran Wang

We consider interacting agent systems with a large number of stochastic agents (or particles) influenced by a fixed number of external stochastic lead agents. Such examples arise, for example in models of opinion dynamics, where a small…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-23 Sebastian Zimper , Ana Djurdjevac , Carsten Hartmann , Christof Schütte , Nataša Djurdjevac Conrad

Optimal control problem is typically solved by first finding the value function through Hamilton-Jacobi equation (HJE) and then taking the minimizer of the Hamiltonian to obtain the control. In this work, instead of focusing on the value…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-09-10 Alain Bensoussan , Jiayue Han , Sheung Chi Phillip Yam , Xiang Zhou

We study a specific class of finite-horizon mean field optimal stopping problems by means of the dynamic programming approach. In particular, we consider problems where the state process is not affected by the stopping time. Such problems…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-03-07 Andrea Cosso , Laura Perelli

We establish an algebraic rate of convergence in the large number of players limit of the value functions of N-particle stochastic control problems towards the value function of the corresponding McKean-Vlasov problem also known as mean…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-01-09 Pierre Cardaliaguet , Samuel Daudin , Joe Jackson , Panagiotis Souganidis

We consider mean-field control problems in discrete time with discounted reward, infinite time horizon and compact state and action space. The existence of optimal policies is shown and the limiting mean-field problem is derived when the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-16 Nicole Bäuerle

We introduce the concept of {\it mean-field optimal control} which is the rigorous limit process connecting finite dimensional optimal control problems with ODE constraints modeling multi-agent interactions to an infinite dimensional…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-02-20 Massimo Fornasier , Francesco Solombrino
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