Minimal Solutions of Master Equations for Extended Mean Field Games

Topic: 
Minimal Solutions of Master Equations for Extended Mean Field Games
Date & Time: 
Tuesday, November 21, 2023 - 17:00 to 18:00
Speaker: 
Chenchen Mou, City University of Hong Kong
Location: 
W923, West Hall, NYU Shanghai New Bund Campus

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Abstract:

In an extended mean field game the vector field governing the flow of the population can be different from that of the individual player at some mean field equilibrium. This new class strictly includes the standard mean field games. It is well known that, without any monotonicity conditions, mean field games typically contain multiple mean field equilibria and the wellposedness of their corresponding master equations fails. In this paper, a partial order for the set of probability measure flows is proposed to compare different mean field equilibria. The minimal and maximal mean field equilibria under this partial order are constructed  and satisfy the flow property. The corresponding value functions, however, are in general discontinuous.  We thus introduce a notion of weak-viscosity solutions for the master equation and verify that the value functions are indeed weak-viscosity solutions. Moreover, a comparison principle for weak-viscosity semi-solutions is established and thus these two value functions serve as the minimal and maximal weak-viscosity solutions in appropriate sense. In particular, when these two value functions coincide, the value function becomes the unique weak-viscosity solution to the master equation. The novelties of the work persist even when restricted to the standard mean field games. This is based on a joint work with Jianfeng Zhang.

Biography:

Chenchen Mou is currently an assistant professor at City University of Hong Kong. He finished his Ph.D. at Georgia Tech in 2016 and did his Postdoc at UCLA during 2016-2020. His research interests are Mean field games, Stochastic control and games, Stochastic analysis and PDEs.

Seminar by the NYU-ECNU Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU Shanghai

This event is open to the NYU Shanghai community and Math community.