On Piecewise Affine Reachability with Bellman Operators

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Varonka, Anton, Watanabe, Kazuki
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Varonka, Anton
Watanabe, Kazuki
author_facet Varonka, Anton
Watanabe, Kazuki
contents We study the following reachability problem for piecewise affine maps: Given two vectors $\mathbf{s}, \mathbf{t} \in \mathbb{Q}^d$ and a piecewise affine map $f \colon \mathbb{Q}^d\rightarrow \mathbb{Q}^d$, does there exist $n\in \mathbb{N}$ such that $f^{n}(\mathbf{s}) = \mathbf{t}$? In this work, we focus on this reachability problem for a subclass of piecewise affine maps -- Bellman operators arising from Markov decision processes. We prove that the reachability problem for $\max$- and $\min$-Bellman operators is decidable in any dimension under either of the following conditions: (i) the target vector $\mathbf{t}$ is not the fixed point of the operator $f$; or (ii) the initial and target vectors $\mathbf{s}$ and $\mathbf{t}$ are comparable with respect to the componentwise order. Furthermore, we show that in the two-dimensional case, the reachability problem for Bellman operators is decidable for arbitrary $\mathbf{s}, \mathbf{t} \in \mathbb{Q}^2$. This stands in sharp contrast to the known undecidability of reachability for general piecewise affine maps in dimension $d = 2$.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_19923
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On Piecewise Affine Reachability with Bellman Operators
Varonka, Anton
Watanabe, Kazuki
Discrete Mathematics
Logic in Computer Science
Dynamical Systems
We study the following reachability problem for piecewise affine maps: Given two vectors $\mathbf{s}, \mathbf{t} \in \mathbb{Q}^d$ and a piecewise affine map $f \colon \mathbb{Q}^d\rightarrow \mathbb{Q}^d$, does there exist $n\in \mathbb{N}$ such that $f^{n}(\mathbf{s}) = \mathbf{t}$? In this work, we focus on this reachability problem for a subclass of piecewise affine maps -- Bellman operators arising from Markov decision processes. We prove that the reachability problem for $\max$- and $\min$-Bellman operators is decidable in any dimension under either of the following conditions: (i) the target vector $\mathbf{t}$ is not the fixed point of the operator $f$; or (ii) the initial and target vectors $\mathbf{s}$ and $\mathbf{t}$ are comparable with respect to the componentwise order. Furthermore, we show that in the two-dimensional case, the reachability problem for Bellman operators is decidable for arbitrary $\mathbf{s}, \mathbf{t} \in \mathbb{Q}^2$. This stands in sharp contrast to the known undecidability of reachability for general piecewise affine maps in dimension $d = 2$.
title On Piecewise Affine Reachability with Bellman Operators
topic Discrete Mathematics
Logic in Computer Science
Dynamical Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.19923