English

On discontinuity of planar optimal transport maps

Analysis of PDEs 2015-07-29 v2

Abstract

Consider two bounded domains Ω\Omega and Λ\Lambda in R2\mathbb{R}^{2}, and two sufficiently regular probability measures μ\mu and ν\nu supported on them. By Brenier's theorem, there exists a unique transportation map TT satisfying T#μ=νT_\#\mu=\nu and minimizing the quadratic cost RnT(x)x2dμ(x)\int_{\mathbb{R}^{n}}|T(x)-x|^{2}d\mu(x). Furthermore, by Caffarelli's regularity theory for the real Monge--Amp\`ere equations, if Λ\Lambda is convex, TT is continuous. We study the reverse problem, namely, when is TT discontinuous if Λ\Lambda fails to be convex? We prove a result guaranteeing the discontinuity of TT in terms of the geometries of Λ\Lambda and Ω\Omega in the two-dimensional case. The main idea is to use tools of convex analysis and the extrinsic geometry of Λ\partial\Lambda to distinguish between Brenier and Alexandrov weak solutions of the Monge--Amp\`ere equation. We also use this approach to give a new proof of a result due to Wolfson and Urbas. We conclude by revisiting an example of Caffarelli, giving a detailed study of a discontinuous map between two explicit domains, and determining precisely where the discontinuities occur.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1312.2929,
  title  = {On discontinuity of planar optimal transport maps},
  author = {Otis Chodosh and Vishesh Jain and Michael Lindsey and Lyuboslav Panchev and Yanir A. Rubinstein},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1312.2929},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

Final version, to appear in the Journal of Topology and Analysis