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Understanding the space of probability measures on a metric space equipped with a Wasserstein distance is one of the fundamental questions in mathematical analysis. The Wasserstein metric has received a lot of attention in the machine…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-02 Arijit Sehanobish , Neal Ravindra , David van Dijk

We study first-order optimality conditions for constrained optimization in the Wasserstein space, whereby one seeks to minimize a real-valued function over the space of probability measures endowed with the Wasserstein distance. Our…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-03-03 Nicolas Lanzetti , Saverio Bolognani , Florian Dörfler

There is extensive literature on accelerating first-order optimization methods in a Euclidean setting. Under which conditions such acceleration is feasible in Riemannian optimization problems is an active area of research. Motivated by the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-23 Jiyoung Park , Abhishek Roy , Jonathan W. Siegel , Anirban Bhattacharya

Wasserstein gradient flows are continuous time dynamics that define curves of steepest descent to minimize an objective function over the space of probability measures (i.e., the Wasserstein space). This objective is typically a divergence…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-02-23 Adil Salim , Anna Korba , Giulia Luise

Sampling a target probability distribution with an unknown normalization constant is a fundamental challenge in computational science and engineering. Recent work shows that algorithms derived by considering gradient flows in the space of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-03-12 Yifan Chen , Daniel Zhengyu Huang , Jiaoyang Huang , Sebastian Reich , Andrew M Stuart

In this paper, we study the stochastic Hamiltonian flow in Wasserstein manifold, the probability density space equipped with $L^2$-Wasserstein metric tensor, via the Wong--Zakai approximation. We begin our investigation by showing that the…

Probability · Mathematics 2021-12-01 Jianbo Cui , Shu Liu , Haomin Zhou

We study Fokker--Planck equations with symmetric, positive definite mobility matrices capturing diffusion in heterogeneous environments. A weighted Wasserstein metric is introduced for which these equations are gradient flows. This metric…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-19 Hailiang Liu , Athanasios E. Tzavaras

This paper presents a groundbreaking approach to causal inference by integrating continuous normalizing flows (CNFs) with parametric submodels, enhancing their geometric sensitivity and improving upon traditional Targeted Maximum Likelihood…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-02 Kaiwen Hou

We construct a Wasserstein gradient flow of the maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) and study its convergence properties. The MMD is an integral probability metric defined for a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS), and serves as a metric on…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-12-04 Michael Arbel , Anna Korba , Adil Salim , Arthur Gretton

In this paper, we describe a possible generalization of the Wasserstein 2-metric, originally defined on the space of scalar probability densities, to the space of Hermitian matrices with trace one, and to the space of matrix-valued…

Mathematical Physics · Physics 2016-10-11 Yongxin Chen , Tryphon T. Georgiou , Allen Tannenbaum

This article details a novel numerical scheme to approximate gradient flows for optimal transport (i.e. Wasserstein) metrics. These flows have proved useful to tackle theoretically and numerically non-linear diffusion equations that model…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-03-10 Gabriel Peyré

We study optimization problems whereby the optimization variable is a probability measure. Since the probability space is not a vector space, many classical and powerful methods for optimization (e.g., gradients) are of little help. Thus,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-06-18 Nicolas Lanzetti , Antonio Terpin , Florian Dörfler

We prove that the sequence of marginals obtained from the iterations of the Sinkhorn algorithm or the iterative proportional fitting procedure (IPFP) on joint densities, converges to an absolutely continuous curve on the $2$-Wasserstein…

Probability · Mathematics 2026-04-21 Nabarun Deb , Young-Heon Kim , Soumik Pal , Geoffrey Schiebinger

We present a novel multiscale framework for analyzing sequences of probability measures in Wasserstein spaces over Euclidean domains. Exploiting the intrinsic geometry of optimal transport, we construct a multiscale transform applicable to…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2026-04-13 Wael Mattar , Nir Sharon

Wasserstein gradient flow has emerged as a promising approach to solve optimization problems over the space of probability distributions. A recent trend is to use the well-known JKO scheme in combination with input convex neural networks to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-26 Jiaojiao Fan , Qinsheng Zhang , Amirhossein Taghvaei , Yongxin Chen

The computation of Wasserstein gradient direction is essential for posterior sampling problems and scientific computing. The approximation of the Wasserstein gradient with finite samples requires solving a variational problem. We study the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-27 Yifei Wang , Peng Chen , Mert Pilanci , Wuchen Li

This is an expository paper on the theory of gradient flows, and in particular of those PDEs which can be interpreted as gradient flows for the Wasserstein metric on the space of probability measures (a distance induced by optimal…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2016-09-14 Filippo Santambrogio

We present a simple approach to study the one-dimensional pressureless Euler system via adhesion dynamics in the Wasserstein space of probability measures with finite quadratic moments. Starting from a discrete system of a finite number of…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2014-09-16 Luca Natile , Giuseppe Savaré

We introduce the observable Wasserstein distance, a framework for deriving lower bounds on the Wasserstein distance between probability measures on Polish metric spaces, designed to bypass the computational intractability of exact optimal…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2026-05-12 Edivaldo Lopes dos Santos , Leandro Vicente Mauri , Washington Mio , Tom Needham

Optimal transport is a foundational problem in optimization, that allows to compare probability distributions while taking into account geometric aspects. Its optimal objective value, the Wasserstein distance, provides an important loss…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-21 Marin Ballu , Quentin Berthet , Francis Bach