Consensus as a Nash Equilibrium of a Stochastic Differential Game

Abstract

In this paper a consensus has been constructed in a social network which is modeled by a stochastic differential game played by agents of that network. Each agent independently minimizes a cost function which represents their motives. A conditionally expected integral cost function has been considered under an agent’s opinion filtration. The dynamic cost functional is minimized subject to a stochastic differential opinion dynamics. As opinion dynamics represents an agent’s differences of opinion from the others as well as from their previous opinions, random influences and stubbornness make it more volatile. An agent uses their rate of change of opinion at certain time point as a control input. This turns out to be a non-cooperative stochastic differential game which have a feedback Nash equilibrium. A Feynman-type path integral approach has been used to determine an optimal feedback opinion and control. This is a new approach in this literature. Later in this paper an explicit solution of a feedback Nash equilibrium opinion is determined.