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Consider a probability measure on a Hilbert space defined via its density with respect to a Gaussian. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that an appropriately defined Markov chain, which is reversible with respect to the measure in…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2014-04-21 Natesh S. Pillai , Andrew M. Stuart , Alexandre H. Thiery

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 introduce a modified Benamou-Brenier type approach leading to a Wasserstein type distance that allows global invariance, specifically, isometries, and we show that the problem can be summarized to orthogonal transformations. This…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-03-24 Kevine Meugang Toukam

In this paper we present a numerical scheme for nonlinear continuity equations, which is based on the gradient flow formulation of an energy functional with respect to the quadratic transportation distance. It can be applied to a large…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2016-11-23 José A. Carrillo , Helene Ranetbauer , Marie-Therese Wolfram

We study the discretization of generalized Wasserstein distances with nonlinear mobilities on the real line via suitable discrete metrics on the cone of N ordered particles, a setting which naturally appears in the framework of…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2022-09-01 Simone Di Marino , Lorenzo Portinale , Emanuela Radici

An analogue of the quadratic Wasserstein (or Monge-Kantorovich) distance between Borel probability measures on $\mathbf{R}^d$ has been defined in [F. Golse, C. Mouhot, T. Paul: Commun. Math. Phys. 343 (2015), 165-205] for density operators…

Mathematical Physics · Physics 2021-02-10 Emanuele Caglioti , François Golse , Thierry Paul

The diffusive transport distance, a novel pseudo-metric between probability measures on the real line, is introduced. It generalizes Martingale optimal transport, and forms a hierarchy with the Hellinger and the Wasserstein metrics. We…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2025-01-27 Daniel Matthes , Eva-Maria Rott , André Schlichting

We develop the theory of a metric, which we call the $\nu$-based Wasserstein metric and denote by $W_\nu$, on the set of probability measures $\mathcal P(X)$ on a domain $X \subseteq \mathbb{R}^m$. This metric is based on a slight…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-09-16 Luca Nenna , Brendan Pass

Let $M$ be a complete connected Riemannian manifold. For $n \geq 0$, we endow the Wasserstein space $P^{(n)}_2(M) = P_2(\ldots P_2(M)\ldots)$, equipped with the Wasserstein distance $W_2$, with a variational structure that generalizes the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-04 Christophe Vauthier

The Wasserstein barycenter extends the Euclidean mean to the space of probability measures by minimizing the weighted sum of squared 2-Wasserstein distances. We develop a free-support algorithm for computing Wasserstein barycenters that…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-09-17 Kisung You

We propose a mesoscopic modeling framework for optimal transportation networks with biological applications. The network is described in terms of a joint probability measure on the phase space of tensor-valued conductivity and position in…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2024-01-23 Jan Haskovec , Peter Markowich , Simone Portaro

We study the optimal transport problem in sub-Riemannian manifolds where the cost function is given by the square of the sub-Riemannian distance. Under appropriate assumptions, we generalize Brenier-McCann's Theorem proving existence and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2009-10-15 Alessio Figalli , Ludovic Rifford

This paper deals with the large-scale behaviour of dynamical optimal transport on $\mathbb{Z}^d$-periodic graphs with general lower semicontinuous and convex energy densities. Our main contribution is a homogenisation result that describes…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2021-10-29 Peter Gladbach , Eva Kopfer , Jan Maas , Lorenzo Portinale

We study the problem of estimating a sequence of evolving probability distributions from historical data, where the underlying distribution changes over time in a nonstationary and nonparametric manner. To capture gradual changes, we…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-16 Edward J. Anderson , Dominic S. T. Keehan

Gradient flows of the Kullback--Leibler (KL) divergence, such as the Fokker--Planck equation and Stein Variational Gradient Descent, evolve a distribution toward a target density known only up to a normalizing constant. We introduce new…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-02-09 Elias Hess-Childs , Dejan Slepčev , Lantian Xu

We propose a mathematically principled PDE gradient flow framework for distributionally robust optimization (DRO). Exploiting the recent advances in the intersection of Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling and gradient flow theory, we show…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-27 Zusen Xu , Jia-Jie Zhu

We study the nonlinear Fokker-Planck equation on graphs, which is the gradient flow in the space of probability measures supported on the nodes with respect to the discrete Wasserstein metric. The energy functional driving the gradient flow…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2017-09-26 Shui-Nee Chow , Wuchen Li , Haomin Zhou

In this paper, we apply the framework of optimal transport to the formulation of optimal design problems. By considering the Wasserstein space as a set of design variables, we associate each probability measure with a shape configuration of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-08 Fumiya Okazaki , Takayuki Yamada

Flow matching has recently emerged as a flexible and efficient framework for generative modelling by learning deterministic transport dynamics between probability measures. In this work, we extend flow matching to the space of probability…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Moritz Piening , Richard Duong , Gabriele Steidl

This paper presents a methodology and numerical algorithms for constructing accelerated gradient flows on the space of probability distributions. In particular, we extend the recent variational formulation of accelerated gradient methods in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-01-14 Amirhossein Taghvaei , Prashant G. Mehta