Research
On-device research index

arXiv research

A locally-built, LLM-digested index of recent arXiv papers in quant finance, geometry/topology, and statistical ML — keyword search served straight from SQLite on this machine.

168,742 papers · 148 categories

Trend · papers per month

3774111148 · May 202619922001200920172026
48 results for soft Bellman equation

New approach transfers rewards learned in one environment to reinforcement learning in a new environment.

problem Transfer of rewards learned using inverse reinforcement learning from one environment to a new, different environment.
method Formulate the problem as a joint system of Bellman equations, develop minimax estimators for the target soft-qq-function, solve the source and target system of equations jointly.
result The coupled approach removes the first-order influence of source Bellman residual error compared to the sequential approach.

The paper analyzes the convergence rates of Q-learning with entropy regularization and linear function approximation.

problem Analyzing the convergence rates of Q-learning with entropy regularization and linear function approximation.
method The paper derives rates of convergence using the high-dimensional central limit theorem, linearization of the soft Bellman recursion, and Gaussian approximation for the leading martingale term.
result The algorithm's last iterate satisfies high-order moment bounds, with a Gaussian approximation bound of order n1/4n^{-1/4}.

This paper analyzes how periodic and soft target updates stabilize linear Q-learning.

problem Theoretical explanation of stabilization mechanisms for linear Q-learning.
method Exact analysis using switched linear system dynamics and the joint spectral radius.
result Periodic and soft target updates can guarantee convergence to the exact projected Q-Bellman solution under specific conditions.

The paper explores solutions to the distributional Bellman equation in reinforcement learning.

problem Distributional reinforcement learning considers complete return distributions, not just expected returns.
method Study existence and uniqueness of solutions to general distributional Bellman equations, linking them to multivariate affine equations.
result Any solution to a distributional Bellman equation can be derived from a multivariate affine distributional equation.

The Bellman error is a poor proxy for value function accuracy, even with all state-action pairs.

problem The Bellman error is a poor proxy for the accuracy of the value function.
method Study of the Bellman equation as a surrogate objective for value prediction accuracy.
result The magnitude of the Bellman error is only weakly related to the distance to the true value function, even with all state-action pairs.

Improved risk-sensitive RL with exponential Bellman equation and better regret bounds.

problem Exponential gap between upper and lower bounds in risk-sensitive RL.
method Identified and addressed deficiencies in existing algorithms and analysis; developed novel analysis and exploration mechanism.
result Improved regret upper bounds over existing ones.

Study solves optimal portfolio selection using HJB equation.

problem Optimal portfolio selection problem.
method Maximal monotone operator method, Banach fixed-point theorem, Fourier transform, monotone operators technique.
result Existence and uniqueness of solution to HJB equation.

New algorithms estimate Q-functions under partial coverage and realizability, improving offline RL guarantees.

problem Offline RL with limited exploration and assumptions about data coverage and Q-function realizability.
method Proposes minimax learning algorithms to estimate soft or vanilla Q-functions with L2L^2-convergence guarantees.
result PAC guarantees for offline RL under partial coverage and realizability conditions.

Deep neural nets approximate high-dimensional HJB equations efficiently.

problem Approximating solutions to high-dimensional HJB equations.
method Deep neural networks for approximating solutions.
result Deep neural networks can approximate solutions without the curse of dimensionality.

The paper solves a complex financial optimization problem using a novel mathematical technique.

problem Optimizing portfolio selection in financial markets.
method Maximal monotone operator method and Riccati transformation.
result Existence and uniqueness of a solution to the transformed parabolic equation in a Sobolev space.

Short note on soft-max and policy gradients in bandit problems using Lyapunov functions.

problem Analyzing soft-max and policy gradient methods in bandit problems.
method Lyapunov function argument for soft-max and differential equations for policy gradient algorithms.
result Regret bounds for soft-max and a different policy gradient algorithm in bandit problems.

The paper introduces Bellman-consistent pessimism to improve offline reinforcement learning without overly pessimistic bias.

problem Offline reinforcement learning's challenge of discovering good policies without exhaustive exploration.
method Introduces Bellman-consistent pessimism for function approximation, improving sample complexity and adaptability.
result Improves sample complexity by O(d)\mathcal{O}(d) in the action space finite case, and automatically adapts to bias-variance tradeoff.

Optimal contracts are found for agents with quadratic effort costs.

problem Finding optimal contracts in principal-agent problems with quadratic effort costs.
method Modeling the problem using Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equations and proving the existence of classical solutions.
result Existence of optimal contracts for agents with quadratic effort costs is proven.

The problem of determining the European-style option price in the incomplete market has been examined within the framework of stochastic optimization. An analytic method based on the discrete dynamic programming equation (Bellman equation) has been developed that gives the general formalism for determining the option p…

1998-07-30abs ↗pdf ↗

We solve continuous-time reinforcement learning using distributional Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equations.

problem Predicting the distribution of returns in continuous-time, stochastic environments.
method We derive a distributional Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation for Itô diffusions and Feller-Dynkin processes, and propose an algorithm based on a JKO scheme.
result We propose an online control algorithm that can be used to approximately solve the distributional HJB equation.

New method quantifies uncertainty in reinforcement learning models.

problem Quantifying uncertainty over expected cumulative rewards in reinforcement learning.
method Proposes a new uncertainty Bellman equation to more accurately estimate value function variance.
result Our method converges to the true posterior variance over values and improves sample-efficiency.

Deep nets solve MDPs without high dimensions.

problem Solving Bellman equations for MDPs in high dimensions.
method Deep neural networks with ReLU activation approximating payoff and transition functions.
result Deep nets can approximate QQ-functions in polynomially bounded parameters.

Deep learning for HJB PDEs using synthetic data and residual minimization.

problem Solving Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman PDEs for optimal control problems.
method Gradient-augmented synthetic dataset for supervised learning, residual minimization.
result Improves accuracy and efficiency of deep learning for HJB PDEs.

We consider the exploration/exploitation problem in reinforcement learning. For exploitation, it is well known that the Bellman equation connects the value at any time-step to the expected value at subsequent time-steps. In this paper we consider a similar \textit{uncertainty} Bellman equation (UBE), which connects the…

2017-09-15abs ↗pdf ↗

Optimizes control of infectious disease spread using stochastic methods.

problem Optimizing control of highly infectious diseases like COVID-19.
method Reformulated Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation as stochastic minimum principle, leading to forward-backward stochastic differential equations.
result Numerous numerical solutions presented under various scenarios.

We consider a general class of non-linear Bellman equations. These open up a design space of algorithms that have interesting properties, which has two potential advantages. First, we can perhaps better model natural phenomena. For instance, hyperbolic discounting has been proposed as a mathematical model that matches …

2019-07-08abs ↗pdf ↗

Optimal reinsurance strategies for multi-line insurance companies.

problem Choosing the best dynamic reinsurance policies for multi-line insurance companies.
method Characterized the optimal survival function as the unique nondecreasing viscosity solution of the HJB equation, solved numerically using the finite difference method.
result Provided proof of convergence of numerical solution to the survival probability function.

This paper shows ARMs and EBMs are equivalent, revealing ARM lookahead capabilities.

problem Understanding the lookahead capabilities of next-token prediction models.
method Unified view of ARMs and EBMs, establishing a bijection and deriving equivalence.
result ARMs and EBMs are equivalent, revealing ARM lookahead capabilities.

New RL formulation for maximizing maximum reward in molecule generation.

problem Traditional RL frameworks do not fit real-world applications like drug discovery.
method Formulated a new objective function to maximize maximum reward, derived Bellman equation, introduced operators, and proved convergence.
result Achieved state-of-the-art results in molecule generation.

A new option pricing model handles non-constant risk aversion and transaction costs.

problem Deriving a pricing model for options with varying risk aversion.
method Developed a transformation method to solve the penalized nonlinear PDE and used finite difference discretization.
result Derived bounds on option prices and proposed a numerical scheme.

A neural network approach solves optimal decumulation problems for pension plans.

problem Optimal asset allocation and withdrawal strategies for DC pension holders.
method Data-driven neural network optimization with customized activation functions.
result The neural network approach learns near-optimal solutions comparable to HJB PDE methods.