Understanding and Stabilizing Deep Q-Learning via Controlled Bootstrapping and Regulated Value Dynamics

Excerpt

arXiv:2608.16182v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Deep Q-learning (DQL) has achieved remarkable empirical success in reinforcement learning, yet its training process remains notoriously unstable. Existing studies often attribute instability to isolated factors such as overestimation bias or representation learning issues, lacking a unified understanding of how different sources of instability interact during recursive value estimation. In this work, we provide a systematic analysis of instabilit