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A learner aims to minimize a function $f$ by repeatedly querying a distributed oracle that provides noisy gradient evaluations. At the same time, the learner seeks to hide $\arg\min f$ from a malicious eavesdropper that observes the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-21 Adit Jain , Vikram Krishnamurthy

The goal of policy-based reinforcement learning (RL) is to search the maximal point of its objective. However, due to the inherent non-concavity of its objective, convergence to a first-order stationary point (FOSP) can not guarantee the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-04 Long Yang , Qian Zheng , Gang Pan

Reinforcement Learning, particularly through policy gradient methods, has played a central role in enabling reasoning capabilities of Large Language Models. However, the optimization stability of policy gradients in this setting remains…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Luckeciano C. Melo , Alessandro Abate , Yarin Gal

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is central to simulation optimization, stochastic programming, and online M-estimation, where sampling effort is a decision variable. We study the mini-batch gradient noise as a sampling-design object.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-16 Daniel Zantedeschi , Kumar Muthuraman

We consider the problem of control in the setting of reinforcement learning (RL), where model information is not available. Policy gradient algorithms are a popular solution approach for this problem and are usually shown to converge to a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-24 Mizhaan Prajit Maniyar , Akash Mondal , Prashanth L. A. , Shalabh Bhatnagar

We demonstrate how quantum optimal control can be used to enhance quantum resources for bipartite one-way protocols, specifically EPR-steering with qubit measurements. Steering is relevant for one-sided device-independent key distribution,…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2016-03-09 Jukka Kiukas , Daniel Burgarth

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 present a method for learning unknown parametric constraints from locally-optimal input-output trajectory data. We assume the data is generated by rollouts of stochastic nonlinear dynamics, under a single state or output feedback law and…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-02-10 Chih-Yuan Chiu , Zhouyu Zhang , Glen Chou

Reinforcement learning consists of finding policies that maximize an expected cumulative long-term reward in a Markov decision process with unknown transition probabilities and instantaneous rewards. In this paper, we consider the problem…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2018-07-31 Santiago Paternain , Juan Andrés Bazerque , Austin Small , Alejandro Ribeiro

Continuous-time Markov decision processes are an important class of models in a wide range of applications, ranging from cyber-physical systems to synthetic biology. A central problem is how to devise a policy to control the system in order…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2016-06-01 Ezio Bartocci , Luca Bortolussi , Tomǎš Brázdil , Dimitrios Milios , Guido Sanguinetti

Stochastic policies (also known as relaxed controls) are widely used in continuous-time reinforcement learning algorithms. However, executing a stochastic policy and evaluating its performance in a continuous-time environment remain open…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-03 Yanwei Jia , Du Ouyang , Yufei Zhang

We study the sample complexity of learning an $\epsilon$-optimal policy in the Stochastic Shortest Path (SSP) problem. We first derive sample complexity bounds when the learner has access to a generative model. We show that there exists a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-20 Jean Tarbouriech , Matteo Pirotta , Michal Valko , Alessandro Lazaric

We study the sample complexity of learning an $\epsilon$-optimal policy in the Stochastic Shortest Path (SSP) problem. We first derive sample complexity bounds when the learner has access to a generative model. We show that there exists a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-12 Liyu Chen , Andrea Tirinzoni , Matteo Pirotta , Alessandro Lazaric

We propose a method for finding approximate compilations of quantum unitary transformations, based on techniques from policy gradient reinforcement learning. The choice of a stochastic policy allows us to rephrase the optimization problem…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-09-14 David A. Herrera-Martí

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has emerged as a powerful framework for sequential decision-making in dynamic environments, particularly when system parameters are unknown. This paper investigates RL-based control for entropy-regularized…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-12-02 Gabriel Diaz , Lucky Li , Wenhao Zhang

Structured reinforcement learning and stochastic optimization often involve parameters evolving on matrix Lie groups such as rotations and rigid-body transformations. We establish a representation-optimization dichotomy for…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-27 Sooraj KC , Vivek Mishra

Policy gradients methods apply to complex, poorly understood, control problems by performing stochastic gradient descent over a parameterized class of polices. Unfortunately, even for simple control problems solvable by standard dynamic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-22 Jalaj Bhandari , Daniel Russo

This paper examines learning the optimal filtering policy, known as the Kalman gain, for a linear system with unknown noise covariance matrices using noisy output data. The learning problem is formulated as a stochastic policy optimization…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-10-27 Shahriar Talebi , Amirhossein Taghvaei , Mehran Mesbahi

This paper studies how a stochastic gradient algorithm (SG) can be controlled to hide the estimate of the local stationary point from an eavesdropper. Such problems are of significant interest in distributed optimization settings like…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-14 Adit Jain , Vikram Krishnamurthy

Kalman filtering is a cornerstone of estimation theory, yet learning the optimal filter under unknown and potentially singular noise covariances remains a fundamental challenge. In this paper, we revisit this problem through the lens of…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-08 Larsen Bier , Shahriar Talebi
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