arXiv Machine Learning

Kernel-based potential mean-field games with unbiased random Fourier $U$-statistics

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 4

Towards Scaling Reinforcement Learning to Massive Populations: Learning Mean-Field Representations

The paper proposes a mean‑field reinforcement learning framework that models rewards and transitions as functions of an unknown low‑dimensional aggregate statistic of a large agent population. By learning this low‑dimensional representation in an offline setting, the authors demonstrate a provable method for obtaining near‑optimal policies. Experiments on a one‑step routing game inspired by supply‑chain problems show that, with a fixed neural‑network size and optimization budget, the learned representation improves reward prediction and the quality of Nash equilibria compared to baselines that ignore population structure.

By Aditya Makkar, Benjamin Unger, Jeongyeol Kwon, Mathieu Lauri\`ere, Eugene Vinitsky, Yonathan Efroni
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 20

Self-supervised In-context Operator Learning for Stochastic Mean-Field Control

The paper introduces a mesh‑free, self‑supervised neural operator—called the Normalizing Flow Invertible Solution Transformer (NFIST)—for stochastic mean‑field control (MFC). By reformulating the controlled Fokker–Planck dynamics as a deterministic continuity equation via a probability‑flow ODE and an invertible normalizing‑flow transformer, the authors enable closed‑form score evaluation with linear cost per particle. The resulting operator learns from task prompts (distribution parameters or particle clouds) and can solve unseen MFC tasks in a single forward pass, achieving zero‑shot generalization across applications such as stochastic optimal control, Schrödinger bridges, systemic‑risk control, and obstacle‑avoiding path planning.

By Suyi Gao, Mo Zhou, Rongjie Lai
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jun 25

Mean-Field PhiBE: Continuous-Time Mean-Field Reinforcement Learning from Discrete-Time Data

This paper addresses model-free continuous-time mean-field control in a setting where the population dynamics evolve continuously according to an unknown McKean-Vlasov stochastic differential equation, while only discrete-time transition data are available. In the model-based formulation, policy evaluation is naturally described by a stationary Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation on $\mathcal P_2(\mathbb R^d)$, but this equation involves the drift and diffusion coefficients of the controlled McKean-Vlasov dynamics, which are not identifiable when only discrete-time data are available.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 3

Adjoint Matching through the Lens of the Stochastic Maximum Principle in Optimal Control

arXiv:2604. 08580v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Reward fine-tuning of diffusion and flow models and sampling from tilted or Boltzmann distributions can both be formulated as stochastic optimal control (SOC) problems, where learning an optimal generative dynamics corresponds to optimizing a control under SDE constraints.

By Carles Domingo-Enrich, Jiequn Han