On the Convergence of Success Conditioning for Policy Optimization
Read the original on arXiv Machine Learning →The Flow has not summarised this story yet — read it at arXiv Machine Learning.
The Flow has not summarised this story yet — read it at arXiv Machine Learning.
The paper introduces a framework for optimal policy improvement in reinforcement learning, defining it as the best single update under given constraints. It shows that restricting improvement to a subset of states is equivalent to solving an induced Markov Decision Process, linking planning with explicit or implicit models to optimal policy improvement. The authors develop a novel operator for greedification under approximate evaluation, demonstrating empirical gains across several RL algorithms and settings.
arXiv:2610.06931v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In this paper, we study the sample complexities of value and policy learning in finite discounted Markov decision processes (MDPs) under recursive entr...
The paper addresses policy optimization in online episodic tabular MDPs with adversarial losses and bandit feedback. By employing regularized Q‑functions, the authors eliminate the extra horizon factor present in previous policy‑optimization regret bounds, achieving high‑probability regret of ≥O(√{HS(H+A)T}) for known transitions and ≥O(HS√{AT}) for unknown transitions. These results improve horizon dependence and match the best-known bounds, with extensions to adversarial linear‑mixture MDPs.
arXiv:2607. 17201v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: In this work we study the Best Policy Identification (BPI) problem in online, tabular Reinforcement Learning.
arXiv:2603. 23461v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We study reinforcement learning (RL) with linear function approximation in Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) satisfying \emph{linear Bellman completeness} -- a fundamental setting where the Bellman backup of any linear value function remains linear.
arXiv:2607. 17823v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement Learning is a cornerstone technique for modern large reasoning models.