Explicit solutions of some linear-quadratic mean field games

Abstract

We consider $N$-person differential games involving linear systems affected by white noise, running cost quadratic in the control and in the displacement of the state from a reference position, and withlong-time-average integral cost functional. We solve an associated system of Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman and Kolmogorov-Fokker-Planck equations and find explicit Nash equilibria in the form of linear feedbacks. Next we compute the limit as the number $N$ of players goes to infinity, assuming they are almost identical and with suitable scalings of the parameters. This provides a quadratic-Gaussian solution to a system of two differential equations of the kind introduced by Lasry and Lions in the theory of Mean Field Games [22]. Under a natural normalization the uniqueness of this solution depends on the sign of a single parameter. We also discuss some singular limits, such as vanishing noise, cheap control, vanishing discount. Finally, we compare the L-Q model with other Mean Field models of population distribution.