lin-0190

15.3 IL–GTD–MP

In a linear off-policy realization, the infinitesimal-learning variant of gradient temporal difference Mirror–Prox (IL–GTD–MP) augments the GTD–Mirror–Prox objective with a quadratic tangent Bellman penalty [ Sutton et al. , 2008 , Maei , 2011 , Nemirovski , 2004 ] .

Proposition 15.2 Quadratic tangent penalty

For a linear value model and fixed probe covariance, the expected squared tangent Bellman residual is a positive-semidefinite quadratic function of the value parameters. Adding it to the regularized GTD saddle objective preserves monotonicity of the associated variational inequality.

Proof ▼

The Bellman residual derivative is affine in the linear parameters. Its squared norm therefore has a positive-semidefinite Gram Hessian. Adding that term to a monotone regularized GTD operator preserves monotonicity.

Standard stochastic Mirror–Prox rates then apply under the usual boundedness, variance, and step-size hypotheses. The guarantee concerns optimization of the declared linear objective. It does not establish global robustness or policy improvement.

Boundary

A small tangent residual controls first-order variation only on the support and in the metric used to define it. Finite-shift and policy claims additionally need coverage, derivative regularity, Bellman inverse conditioning, and a positive action gap.