However, an emerging issue in allocation problems is data privacy.

Resource allocation remains NP-hard due to combinatorial complexity. While deep reinforcement learning (DRL) methods, such as the Rainbow Deep Q-Network (DQN), improve scalability through prioritized replay and distributional heads, classical function approximators limit their representational power. We introduce Variational Quantum Rainbow DQN (VQR-DQN), which integrates ring-topology variational quantum circuits with Rainbow DQN to leverage quantum superposition and entanglement. We frame the human resource allocation problem (HRAP) as a Markov decision process (MDP) with combinatorial action spaces based on officer capabilities, event schedules, and transition times. On four HRAP benchmarks, VQR-DQN achieves 26.8% normalized makespan reduction versus random baselines and outperforms Double DQN and classical Rainbow DQN by 4.9-13.4%. These gains align with theoretical connections between circuit expressibility, entanglement, and policy quality, demonstrating the potential of quantum-enhanced DRL for large-scale resource allocation. Our implementation is available at: https://github.com/Analytics-Everywhere-Lab/qtrl/.

Neural Information Processing Systems http://nips.cc/

We consider the problem of fairly allocating sequentially arriving items to a set of individuals. For this problem, the recently-introduced P ACE algorithm leverages the dual averaging algorithm to approximate competitive equilibria and thus generate online fair allocations. P ACE is simple, distributed, and parameter-free, making it appealing for practical use in large-scale systems. However, current performance guarantees for P ACE require i.i.d.

In addition to this matching distribution constraint, we also require that the recipient's

--The time allocation problem in multi-function cognitive radar systems focuses on the trade-off between scanning for newly emerging targets and tracking the previously detected targets. We formulate this as a multi-objective optimization problem and employ deep reinforcement learning to find Pareto-optimal solutions and compare deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) and soft actor-critic (SAC) algorithms. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of both algorithms in adapting to various scenarios, with SAC showing improved stability and sample efficiency compared to DDPG. We further employ the NSGA-II algorithm to estimate an upper bound on the Pareto front of the considered problem. This work contributes to the development of more efficient and adaptive cognitive radar systems capable of balancing multiple competing objectives in dynamic environments.