In this article, a notion of viscosity solutions is introduced for first order path-dependent Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equations associated with optimal control problems for path-dependent differential equations. We identify the value functional of the optimal control problems as a unique viscosity solution to the associated HJB equations. We also show that our notion of viscosity solutions is consistent with the corresponding notion of classical solutions, and satisfies a stability property.
We investigate the regularizing effect of adding small fractional Laplacian, with critical fractional exponent 1/2, to a general first order HJB equation. Our results include some regularity estimates for the viscosity solutions of such perturbations, making the solutions classically well-defined. Most importantly, we use these regularity estimates to study the vanishing viscosity approximation to first order HJB equations by 1/2-Laplacian and derive an explicit rate convergence for the vanishing viscosity limit.
For Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equations, with the standard definitions of viscosity super-solution and sub-solution, it is known that there is a comparison between any (viscosity) super-solutions and sub-solutions. This should be the same for HJB type quasi-variational inequalities (QVIs) arising from optimal impulse control problems. However, according to a natural adoption of the definition found in Barles 1985, Barles 1985b, the uniqueness of the viscosity solution could be guaranteed, but the comparison between viscosity super- and sub-solutions could not be guaranteed. This paper intr…
Motivated by a control problem of a certain queueing network we consider a control problem where the dynamics is constrained in the nonnegative orthant $\mathbb{R}_+$ of the $d$-dimensional Euclidean space and controlled by the reflections at the faces/boundaries. We define a discounted value function associated to this problem and show that the value function is a viscosity solution to a certain HJB equation in $\mathbb{R}_+$ with nonlinear Neumann type boundary condition. Under certain conditions, we also characterize this value function as the unique solution to this HJB equation.
In this paper we study the fully nonlinear stochastic Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation for the optimal stochastic control problem of stochastic differential equations with random coefficients. The notion of viscosity solution is introduced, and we prove that the value function of the optimal stochastic control problem is the maximal viscosity solution of the associated stochastic HJB equation. For the superparabolic cases when the diffusion coefficients are deterministic functions of time, states and controls, the uniqueness is addressed as well.
This paper deals with junction conditions for Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equations for finite horizon control problems on multi-domains. We consider two different cases where the final cost is continuous or lower semi-continuous. In the continuous case we extend the results of "Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equations on multi-domains" by the second and third authors in a more general framework with switching running costs and weaker controllability assumptions. The comparison principle has been established to guarantee the uniqueness and the stability results for the HJB system on such multi-doma…
In this work we investigate regularity properties of a large class of Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equations with or without obstacles, which can be stochastically interpreted in form of a stochastic control system which nonlinear cost functional is defined with the help of a backward stochastic differential equation (BSDE) or a reflected BSDE (RBSDE). More precisely, we prove that, firstly, the unique viscosity solution $V(t,x)$ of such a HJB equation over the time interval $[0,T],$ with or without an obstacle, and with terminal condition at time $T$, is jointly Lipschitz in $(t,x)$, for $t$…
We study singular perturbation problems for second order HJB equations in an unbounded setting. The main applications are large deviations estimates for the short maturity asymptotics of stochastic systems affected by a stochastic volatility, where the volatility is modelled by a process evolving at a faster time scale and satisfying some condition implying ergodicity.
We study the exploratory Hamilton--Jacobi--Bellman (HJB) equation arising from the entropy-regularized exploratory control problem, which was formulated by Wang, Zariphopoulou and Zhou (J. Mach. Learn. Res., 21, 2020) in the context of reinforcement learning in continuous time and space. We establish the well-posedness and regularity of the viscosity solution to the equation, as well as the convergence of the exploratory control problem to the classical stochastic control problem when the level of exploration decays to zero. We then apply the general results to the exploratory temperature cont…
In this paper we show a uniqueness result for weak epigraphical solutions of Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equations on infinite horizon for a class of lower semicontinuous functions vanishing at infinity. Weak epigraphical solutions of HJB equations, with time-measurable data and fiber-convex, turn out to be viscosity solutions - in the classical sense - whenever they are locally Lipschitz continuous. Here we extend the notion of locally absolutely continuous tubes to set-valued maps with continuous epigraph of locally bounded variations. This new notion fits with the lack of uniform lower bo…
In this paper we propose a new type of viscosity solutions for fully nonlinear path dependent PDEs. By restricting to certain pseudo Markovian structure, we remove the uniform non- degeneracy condition imposed in our earlier works [9, 10]. We establish the comparison principle under natural and mild conditions. Moreover, as applications we apply our results to two important classes of PPDEs: the stochastic HJB equations and the path dependent Isaacs equations, induced from the stochastic optimization with random coefficients and the path dependent zero sum game problem, respectively.
In this paper we study the optimal stochastic control problem for a path-dependent stochastic system under a recursive path-dependent cost functional, whose associated Bellman equation from dynamic programming principle is a path-dependent fully nonlinear partial differential equation of second order. A novel notion of viscosity solutions is introduced. Using Dupire's functional Itô calculus, we characterize the value functional of the optimal stochastic control problem as the unique viscosity solution to the associated path-dependent Bellman equation.
Uniqueness of positive solutions to viscous Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equations of the form $-Δu(x) + \frac{1}γ |D{u}(x)|^γ= f(x) - λ$, with $f$ a coercive function and $λ$ a constant, in the subquadratic case, that is, $γ\in(1,2)$, appears to be an open problem. Barles and Meireles [Comm. Partial Differential Equations 41 (2016)] show uniqueness in the case that $f(x) \approx |x|^β$ and $|D f(x)|\lessapprox |x|^{(β-1)_+}$ for some $β>0$, essentially matching earlier results of Ichihara, who considered more general Hamiltonians but with better regularity for $f$. Without enforcing this ass…
Viscosity solution of systems of integral-partial differential equations with interconnected obstacles without Monotonicity Conditions and infinite L{é}vy measure
Le Mans Université（勒芒大学）；University of Tunis El Manar（突尼斯艾曼大学）
In this paper, we study optimal liquidation problems in a randomly-terminated horizon. We consider the liquidation of a large single-asset portfolio with the aim of minimizing a combination of volatility risk and transaction costs arising from permanent and temporary market impact. Three different scenarios are analyzed under Almgren-Chriss's market impact model to explore the relation between optimal liquidation strategies and potential inventory risk arising from the uncertainty of the liquidation horizon. For cases where no closed-form solutions can be obtained, we verify comparison princip…
The master equation is a type of PDE whose state variable involves the distribution of certain underlying state process. It is a powerful tool for studying the limit behavior of large interacting systems, including mean field games and systemic risk. It also appears naturally in stochastic control problems with partial information and in time inconsistent problems. In this paper we propose a novel notion of viscosity solution for parabolic master equations, arising mainly from control problems, and establish its wellposedness. Our main innovation is to restrict the involved measures to certain…
We study and compare two concepts for weak solutions to semilinear parabolic path-dependent partial differential equations (PPDEs). The first is that of mild solutions as it appears, e.g., in the log-Laplace functionals of historical superprocesses. The aim of this paper is to show that mild solutions are also solutions in a viscosity sense. This result is motivated by the fact that mild solutions can provide value functions and optimal strategies for problems of stochastic optimal control. Since unique mild solutions exist under weak conditions, we obtain as a corollary a general existence re…
The non-exponential Schilder-type theorem in Backhoff-Veraguas, Lacker and Tangpi [Ann. Appl. Probab., 30 (2020), pp. 1321-1367] is expressed as a convergence result for path-dependent partial differential equations with appropriate notions of generalized solutions. This entails a non-Markovian counterpart to the vanishing viscosity method. We show uniqueness of maximal subsolutions for path-dependent viscous Hamilton-Jacobi equations related to convex super-quadratic backward stochastic differential equations. We establish well-posedness for the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation associated to …
We use Perron's method to construct viscosity solutions of fully nonlinear degenerate parabolic pathwise (rough) partial differential equations. This provides an intrinsic method for proving the existence of solutions that relies only on a comparison principle, rather than considering equations driven by smooth approximating paths. The result covers the case of multidimensional geometric rough path noise, where the noise coefficients depend nontrivially on space and on the gradient of the solution. Also included in this note is a discussion of the comparison principle and a summary of the path…
We address our interest to the development of a theory of viscosity solutions {à} la Crandall-Lions for path-dependent partial differential equations (PDEs), namely PDEs in the space of continuous paths C([0, T ]; R^d). Path-dependent PDEs can play a central role in the study of certain classes of optimal control problems, as for instance optimal control problems with delay. Typically, they do not admit a smooth solution satisfying the corresponding HJB equation in a classical sense, it is therefore natural to search for a weaker notion of solution. While other notions of generalized solution …
This paper proves the existence of viscosity solutions of path dependent semilinear PDEs via Perron's method, i.e. via showing that the supremum of viscosity subsolutions is a viscosity solution. We use the notion of viscosity solutions introduced by Ekren, Keller, Touzi and Zhang, in whose work all smooth processes which are tangent in mean are considered as test functions. We also provide a comparison result for semicontinuous viscosity solutions, by using a regularization technique. As an interesting byproduct, we give a new short proof for the optimal stopping problem with semicontinuous o…
This paper introduces a convenient solution space for the uniformly elliptic fully nonlinear path dependent PDEs. It provides a wellposedness result under standard Lipschitz-type assumptions on the nonlinearity and an additional assumption formulated on some partial differential equation defined locally by freezing the path.
We extend the notion of viscosity solutions for path-dependent PDEs introduced by Ekren et al. [Ann. Probab. 42 (2014), no. 1, 204-236] to path-dependent integro-differential equations and establish well-posedness, i.e., existence, uniqueness, and stability, for a class of semilinear path-dependent integro-differential equations with uniformly continuous data. Closely related are non-Markovian backward SDEs with jumps, which provide a probabilistic representation for solutions of our equations. The results are potentially useful for applications using non-Markovian jump-diffusion models.
We prove a comparison result for viscosity solutions of (possibly degenerate) parabolic fully nonlinear path-dependent PDEs. In contrast with the previous result in Ekren, Touzi & Zhang, our conditions are easier to check and allow for the degenerate case, thus including first order path-dependent PDEs. Our argument follows the regularization method as introduced by Jensen, Lions & Souganidis in the corresponding finite-dimensional PDE setting. The present argument significantly simplifies the comparison proof in Ekren, Touzi & Zhang, but requires an $L^p-$type of continuity (with respect to t…
We establish a framework that allows to prove Gamma-converge of functionals of Lagrangian form on spaces of trajectories based on convergence of viscosity solutions of associated Hamilton-Jacobi equations. Gamma convergence follows from a: equi-coercivity, b: Gamma convergence of the projected functional at time 0, c: convergence of the Hamiltonians that appear as Legendre transform of the Lagrangian in the path-space functional.
We introduce a notion of approximate viscosity solution for a class of nonlinear path-dependent PDEs (PPDEs), including the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman type equations. Existence, comparaison and stability results are established under fairly general conditions. It is also consistent with smooth solutions when the dimension is less or equal to two, or the non-linearity is concave in the second order space derivative. We finally investigate the regularity (in the sense of Dupire) of the solution to the PPDE.
In this paper we propose a notion of viscosity solutions for path dependent semi-linear parabolic PDEs. This can also be viewed as viscosity solutions of non-Markovian backward SDEs, and thus extends the well-known nonlinear Feynman-Kac formula to non-Markovian case. We shall prove the existence, uniqueness, stability and comparison principle for the viscosity solutions. The key ingredient of our approach is a functional Itô calculus recently introduced by Dupire [Functional Itô calculus (2009) Preprint].
This paper provides an overview of the recently developed notion of viscosity solutions of path-dependent partial di erential equations. We start by a quick review of the Crandall- Ishii notion of viscosity solutions, so as to motivate the relevance of our de nition in the path-dependent case. We focus on the wellposedness theory of such equations. In partic- ular, we provide a simple presentation of the current existence and uniqueness arguments in the semilinear case. We also review the stability property of this notion of solutions, in- cluding the adaptation of the Barles-Souganidis monoto…
This paper provides a probabilistic proof of the comparison result for viscosity solutions of path-dependent semilinear PDEs. We consider the notion of viscosity solutions introduced in \cite{EKTZ} which considers as test functions all those smooth processes which are tangent in mean. When restricted to the Markovian case, this definition induces a larger set of test functions, and reduces to the notion of stochastic viscosity solutions analyzed in \cite{BayraktarSirbu1,BayraktarSirbu2}. Our main result takes advantage of this enlargement of the test functions, and provides an easier proof of …
