Convergence of two-timescale gradient descent ascent dynamics: finite-dimensional and mean-field perspectives

Abstract: The two-timescale gradient descent-ascent (GDA) is a canonical gradient algorithm designed to find Nash equilibria in min-max games. We analyze the two-timescale GDA by investigating the effects of learning rate ratios on convergence behavior in both finite-dimensional and mean-field settings. In particular, for finite-dimensional quadratic min-max games, we obtain long-time convergence in near quasi-static regimes through the hypocoercivity method. For mean-field GDA dynamics, we investigate convergence under a finite-scale ratio using a mixed synchronous-reflection coupling technique.