English

Exciting games and Monge-Amp\`ere equations

Probability 2025-01-08 v2 Analysis of PDEs

Abstract

We consider a competition between d+1d+1 players, and aim to identify the "most exciting game'' of this kind. This is translated, mathematically, into a stochastic optimization problem over martingales that live on the dd-dimensional subprobability simplex Δ\Delta and terminate on the vertices of Δ\Delta (so-called win-martingales), with a cost function related to a scaling limit of Shannon entropies. We uncover a surprising connection between this problem and the seemingly unrelated field of Monge-Amp\`{e}re equations: If gg solves \begin{equation*} \begin{cases} g(x)=\log \det\left(\frac{1}{2}\nabla^2 g(x)\right), \quad \, \ \ \ \ \, \, \, \, x \in \Delta, \\ g(x)=\infty, \quad \quad \quad \quad \ \ \ \ \ \quad \quad \, \ \ \ \ \ x\in \partial \Delta, \end{cases} \end{equation*} then the winning-probability of the players in the most exciting game is described by dMs=2(2g(Ms))11sdBs.dM_s=\sqrt{\frac{2 (\nabla^2 g(M_s))^{-1}}{1-s} } \, dB_s. To formalize this, a detailed quantitative analysis of the Monge-Amp\`{e}re equation for gg is crucial. This is then leveraged to prove that MM is indeed an optimal win-martingale.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2412.01995,
  title  = {Exciting games and Monge-Amp\`ere equations},
  author = {Julio Backhoff and Zhizhang Wang and Xin Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.01995},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T20:20:32.748Z