Non-Exchangeable Mean Field Markov Decision Processes with common noise : from Bellman equation to quantitative propagation of chaos}

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Authors: S. Mekkaoui, Huyên Pham
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Abstract

We study infinite-horizon Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with a continuum of heterogeneous agents interacting through a common noise, without assuming exchangeability. We introduce the framework of Conditional Non-Exchangeable Mean Field MDPs (CNEMF-MDPs) in both a strong formulation and a label-state formulation. We establish the equivalence between these two formulations by showing that the control problem can be lifted to a standard MDP defined on the Wasserstein space P λ (I ×X ), where I denotes the label (heterogeneity) space, X is the individual state space, and λ specifies the fixed distribution of agent labels. Within this framework, we characterize the value function as the unique fixed point of an appropriate Bellman operator acting on P λ (I × X ). Our second contribution is a quantitative analysis of the propagation of chaos for this non-exchangeable setting with common noise. We derive sharp finite-population bounds by comparing the Bellman operator of the finite N -agent MDP, defined on the high-dimensional space X N , with its infinite-agent counterpart. This comparison yields explicit constructions of near-optimal policies for the N -agent system from -optimal policies of the limiting CNEMF-MDP.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Stochastic processes and financial applications Adaptive Dynamic Programming Control Stochastic processes and statistical mechanics

Publication details

Journal / source
HAL
Publication date
1 January 2026
Language
EN
Document type
Preprint