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arXiv · 2604.03969

Nearly Optimal Best Arm Identification for Semiparametric Bandits

Seok-Jin Kim
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Abstract

We study fixed-confidence Best Arm Identification (BAI) in semiparametric bandits, where rewards are linear in arm features plus an unknown additive baseline shift. Unlike linear-bandit BAI, this setting requires orthogonalized regression, and its instance-optimal sample complexity has remained open. For the transductive setting, we establish an attainable instance-dependent lower bound characterized by the corresponding linear-bandit complexity on shifted features. We then propose a computationally efficient phase-elimination algorithm based on a new $XY$-design for orthogonalized regression. Our analysis yields a nearly optimal high-probability sample-complexity upper bound, up to log factors and an additive $d^2$ term, and experiments on synthetic instances and the Jester dataset show clear gains over prior baselines.

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BibTeXRIS

Seok-Jin Kim. 2026-04-05. Nearly Optimal Best Arm Identification for Semiparametric Bandits. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.03969

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