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We study a natural Wasserstein gradient flow on manifolds of probability distributions with discrete sample spaces. We derive the Riemannian structure for the probability simplex from the dynamical formulation of the Wasserstein distance on…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-04-19 Wuchen Li , Guido Montufar

We develop in this paper an adaptive time-stepping approach for gradient flows with distinct treatments for conservative and non-conservative dynamics. For the non-conservative gradient flows in Lagrangian coordinates, we propose a modified…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2025-04-21 Qianqian Liu , Wenbin Chen , Jie Shen , Qing Cheng

The defining equation $(\ast):\ \dot \omega\_t=-F'(\omega\_t),$ of a gradient flow is kinetic in essence. This article explores some dynamical (rather than kinetic) features of gradient flows (i) by embedding equation $(\ast)$ into the…

Probability · Mathematics 2018-06-11 Ivan Gentil , Christian Léonard , Luigia Ripani

The dynamical formulation of the optimal transport can be extended through various choices of the underlying geometry (kinetic energy), and the regularization of density paths (potential energy). These combinations yield different…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-04 Kirill Neklyudov , Rob Brekelmans , Alexander Tong , Lazar Atanackovic , Qiang Liu , Alireza Makhzani

We develop several efficient numerical schemes which preserve exactly the global constraints for constrained gradient flows. Our schemes are based on the SAV approach combined with the Lagrangian multiplier approach. They are as efficient…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2019-12-17 Qing Cheng , Jie Shen

The Wasserstein space of probability measures is known for its intricate Riemannian structure, which underpins the Wasserstein geometry and enables gradient flow algorithms. However, the Wasserstein geometry may not be suitable for certain…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2025-05-23 Zhengxin Zhang , Ziv Goldfeld , Kristjan Greenewald , Youssef Mroueh , Bharath K. Sriperumbudur

We examine the infinite-dimensional optimization problem of finding a decomposition of a probability measure into K probability sub-measures to minimize specific loss functions inspired by applications in clustering and user grouping. We…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-06-04 Jiangze Han , Christopher Thomas Ryan , Xin T. Tong

Combining the classical theory of optimal transport with modern operator splitting techniques, we develop a new numerical method for nonlinear, nonlocal partial differential equations, arising in models of porous media, materials science,…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2021-02-09 Jose A. Carrillo , Katy Craig , Li Wang , Chaozhen Wei

Wasserstein gradient flow (WGF) is a common method to perform optimization over the space of probability measures. While WGF is guaranteed to converge to a first-order stationary point, for nonconvex functionals the converged solution does…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-23 Naoya Yamamoto , Juno Kim , Taiji Suzuki

Variational inference, such as the mean-field (MF) approximation, requires certain conjugacy structures for efficient computation. These can impose unnecessary restrictions on the viable prior distribution family and further constraints on…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-09-11 Rentian Yao , Yun Yang

Variational inference (VI) can be cast as an optimization problem in which the variational parameters are tuned to closely align a variational distribution with the true posterior. The optimization task can be approached through vanilla…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-24 Dai Hai Nguyen , Tetsuya Sakurai , Hiroshi Mamitsuka

This paper presents a Wasserstein attraction approach for solving dynamic mass transport problems over networks. In the transport problem over networks, we start with a distribution over the set of nodes that needs to be "transported" to a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-04-28 Ferran Arqué , César A. Uribe , Carlos Ocampo-Martinez

The Poisson-Nernst-Planck system of equations used to model ionic transport is interpreted as a gradient flow for the Wasserstein distance and a free energy in the space of probability measures with finite second moment. A variational…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2015-09-08 David Kinderlehrer , Léonard Monsaingeon , Xiang Xu

We present a framework enabling variational data assimilation for gradient flows in general metric spaces, based on the minimizing movement (or Jordan-Kinderlehrer-Otto) approximation scheme. After discussing stability properties in the…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2023-01-18 Jan-F. Pietschmann , Matthias Schlottbom

Wasserstein gradient flows (WGFs) describe the evolution of probability distributions in Wasserstein space as steepest descent dynamics for a free energy functional. Computing the full path from an arbitrary initial distribution to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-14 Chengyu Liu , Xiang Zhou

Variational problems that involve Wasserstein distances have been recently proposed to summarize and learn from probability measures. Despite being conceptually simple, such problems are computationally challenging because they involve…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-08-26 Marco Cuturi , Gabriel Peyré

Sampling from nonsmooth target probability distributions is essential in various applications, including the Bayesian Lasso. We propose a splitting-based sampling algorithm for the time-implicit discretization of the probability flow for…

Computation · Statistics 2025-07-14 Fuqun Han , Stanley Osher , Wuchen Li

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

This paper considers the problem of regression over distributions, which is becoming increasingly important in machine learning. Existing approaches often ignore the geometry of the probability space or are computationally expensive. To…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-31 Maksim Maslov , Alexander Kugaevskikh , Matthew Ivanov

We construct a non-local Benamou-Brenier-type transport distance on the space of stationary point processes and analyse the induced geometry. We show that our metric is a specific variant of the transport distance recently constructed in…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-04-17 Martin Huesmann , Hanna Stange