The paper presents a mean‑field framework for studying multi‑agent Q‑learning in networked populations, where agents update stateless Q‑values on a fixed graph while the average behavior of the population feeds back to modify the payoff matrix. A deterministic transport equation for the distribution of Q‑values is derived and coupled with a discrete update for the environmental state, and the model is validated against Monte Carlo simulations on several random graph topologies. Results show that the mean‑field system captures macroscopic cooperation dynamics, that environmental feedback reshapes action‑value ordering, and that the timescale of environmental response critically influences learning outcomes.
arXiv:2607. 01525v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: This monograph provides an introduction to mean field reinforcement learning through the lens of Markov decision processes arising from large-population stochastic control with mean field interactions and common noise.
The paper investigates whether evolutionary stability guarantees that learning agents can achieve cooperative outcomes in a multi‑agent setting. Using a three‑agent governance game, the authors compare the evolutionary basin of attraction with learning basins derived from independent Q‑learning, scaled Boltzmann exploration, and SA–EA BQL. They find that while the evolutionary basin covers the entire sampled grid, only ε‑greedy Q‑learning attains a substantial learning basin, whereas the other methods fail to sustain cooperation, highlighting a disconnect between population‑level stability and finite‑sample learning accessibility.
Cooperation emergence is a central problem in multi-agent systems because decentralized agents must coordinate while adapting to the changing behavior of others. Evolutionary game theory identifies st...
arXiv:2407. 04521v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: This paper studies the continuous-time q-learning in mean-field jump-diffusion models in a setting where the environment simulator does not provide direct access to the population distribution.
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.
arXiv:2604. 13085v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Autonomous AI agents operating in dynamic environments face a persistent challenge: acquiring new capabilities without erasing prior knowledge.
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:2601. 17454v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Centralized value learning underlies a broad class of multi-agent reinforcement learning methods, but its claimed advantage is typically evaluated in settings that confound coordination structure with function approximation and partial observability.
arXiv:2610.25113v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The explore-exploit trade-off is the core problem of reinforcement learning (RL). In its multi-agent, resource-sharing form the optimum is no...
arXiv:2609.07998v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We study the control of Markov decision processes in which the quality of a policy is evaluated by a dynamic, time-consistent Markov risk measure rathe...
arXiv:2607.12590v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) is traditionally concerned with learning a control policy for a fixed environment. In many engineering systems, h...
arXiv:2607. 08340v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Q-learning is a fundamental algorithm in reinforcement learning (RL) for solving discounted Markov decision processes (MDPs) when the transition kernel is unknown.