Finite Time Analysis of Constrained Natural Critic-Actor Algorithm with Improved Sample Complexity

Prashansa Panda, Shalabh Bhatnagar
10/5/2025
cs.LGcs.AI

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Abstract

Recent studies have increasingly focused on non-asymptotic convergence analyses for actor-critic (AC) algorithms. One such effort introduced a two-timescale critic-actor algorithm for the discounted cost setting using a tabular representation, where the usual roles of the actor and critic are reversed. However, only asymptotic convergence was established there. Subsequently, both asymptotic and non-asymptotic analyses of the critic-actor algorithm with linear function approximation were conducted. In our work, we introduce the first natural critic-actor algorithm with function approximation for the long-run average cost setting and under inequality constraints. We provide the non-asymptotic convergence guarantees for this algorithm. Our analysis establishes optimal learning rates and we also propose a modification to enhance sample complexity. We further show the results of experiments on three different Safety-Gym environments where our algorithm is found to be competitive in comparison with other well known algorithms.

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Cite this paper

@article{panda2025finite,
  title  = {Finite Time Analysis of Constrained Natural Critic-Actor Algorithm with Improved Sample Complexity},
  author = {Prashansa Panda and Shalabh Bhatnagar},
  year   = {2025},
  eprint = {2510.04189},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url    = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04189v1}
}

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