Mean field control with absorption
Abstract
In this paper we study a mean field control problem in which particles are absorbed when they reach the boundary of a smooth domain. The value of the N-particle problem is described by a hierarchy of Hamilton-Jacobi equations which are coupled through their boundary conditions. The value function of the limiting problem; meanwhile, solves a Hamilton-Jacobi equation set on the space of sub-probability measures on the smooth domain, i.e. the space of non-negative measures with total mass at most one. Our main contributions are (i) to establish a comparison principle for this novel infinite-dimensional Hamilton-Jacobi equation and (ii) to prove that the value of the N-particle problem converges in a suitable sense towards the value of the limiting problem as N tends to infinity.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2509.07877,
title = {Mean field control with absorption},
author = {Pierre Cardaliaguet and Joe Jackson and Panagiotis E. Souganidis},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.07877},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
Various changes in response to referee comments