Quantitative convergence for mean field control with common noise and degenerate idiosyncratic noise

Abstract

We consider the convergence problem in the setting of mean field control with common noise and degenerate idiosyncratic noise. Our main results establish a rate of convergence of the finite-dimensional value functions $V^N$ towards the mean field value function $U$. In the case that the idiosyncratic noise is constant (but possibly degenerate), we obtain the rate $N^{-1/(d+7)}$, which is close to the conjectured optimal rate $N^{-1/d}$, and improves on the existing literature even in the non-degenerate setting. In the case that the idiosyncratic noise can be both non-constant and degenerate, the argument is more complicated, and we instead find the rate $N^{-1/(3d + 19)}$. Our proof strategy builds on the one initiated in [Daudin, Delarue, Jackson - JFA, 2024] in the case of non-degenerate idiosyncratic noise and zero common noise, which consists of approximating $U$ by more regular functions which are almost subsolutions of the infinite-dimensional Hamilton-Jacobi equation solved by $U$. Because of the different noise structure, several new steps are necessary in order to produce an appropriate mollification scheme. In addition to our main convergence results, we investigate the case of zero idiosyncratic noise, and show that sharper results can be obtained there by purely control-theoretic arguments. We also provide examples to demonstrate that the value function is sensitive to the choice of admissible controls in the zero noise setting.