Related papers: Global linear convergence of entropy-regularized s…
We consider reinforcement learning (RL) methods for finding optimal policies in linear quadratic (LQ) mean field control (MFC) problems over an infinite horizon in continuous time, with common noise and entropy regularization. We study…
Many recent successful (deep) reinforcement learning algorithms make use of regularization, generally based on entropy or Kullback-Leibler divergence. We propose a general theory of regularized Markov Decision Processes that generalizes…
Robust Markov decision processes (RMDPs) provide a promising framework for computing reliable policies in the face of model errors. Many successful reinforcement learning algorithms build on variations of policy-gradient methods, but…
We provide a framework to analyse control policies for the restless Markovian bandit model, under both finite and infinite time horizon. We show that when the population of arms goes to infinity, the value of the optimal control policy…
We propose a new stochastic primal-dual optimization algorithm for planning in a large discounted Markov decision process with a generative model and linear function approximation. Assuming that the feature map approximately satisfies…
Recent work has led to the development of an elegant theory of Linearly Solvable Markov Decision Processes (LMDPs) and related Path-Integral Control Problems. Traditionally, MDPs have been formulated using stochastic policies and a control…
We study the convergence rate of gradient-based local search methods for solving low-rank matrix recovery problems with general objectives in both symmetric and asymmetric cases, under the assumption of the restricted isometry property.…
We study infinite horizon discounted Mean Field Control (MFC) problems with common noise through the lens of Mean Field Markov Decision Processes (MFMDP). We allow the agents to use actions that are randomized not only at the individual…
We analyzes the logit dynamics of softmax policy gradient methods. We derive the exact formula for the L2 norm of the logit update vector: $$ \|\Delta \mathbf{z}\|_2 \propto \sqrt{1-2P_c + C(P)} $$ This equation demonstrates that update…
This paper considers the problem of finding near-optimal Markovian randomized (MR) policies for finite-state-action, infinite-horizon, constrained risk-sensitive Markov decision processes (CRSMDPs). Constraints are in the form of standard…
Regularized Markov Decision Processes serve as models of sequential decision making under uncertainty wherein the decision maker has limited information processing capacity and/or aversion to model ambiguity. With functional approximation,…
This paper proposes and analyzes two new policy learning methods: regularized policy gradient (RPG) and iterative policy optimization (IPO), for a class of discounted linear-quadratic control (LQC) problems over an infinite time horizon…
Optimization problems with norm-bounding constraints arise in a variety of applications, including portfolio optimization, machine learning, and feature selection. A common approach to these problems involves relaxing the norm constraint…
We study discrete-time mirror descent applied to the unregularized empirical risk in matrix sensing. In both the general case of rectangular matrices and the particular case of positive semidefinite matrices, a simple potential-based…
We study policy optimization for infinite-horizon, discounted constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs). While existing theoretical guarantees typically hold for the mixture policy, deploying such a policy is computationally and memory…
We consider a setting involving $N$ agents, where each agent interacts with an environment modeled as a Markov Decision Process (MDP). The agents' MDPs differ in their reward functions, capturing heterogeneous objectives/tasks. The…
Overparametrization is a key factor in the absence of convexity to explain global convergence of gradient descent (GD) for neural networks. Beside the well studied lazy regime, infinite width (mean field) analysis has been developed for…
The problem of solving Markov decision processes under function approximation remains a fundamental challenge, even under linear function approximation settings. A key difficulty arises from a geometric mismatch: while the Bellman…
We investigate proximal descent methods, inspired by the minimizing movement scheme introduced by Jordan, Kinderlehrer and Otto, for optimizing entropy-regularized functionals on the Wasserstein space. We establish linear convergence under…
We study the convergence of deterministic policy gradient algorithms in continuous state and action space for the prototypical Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) problem when the search space is not limited to the family of linear policies.…