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The Fokker-Planck equation is one of the fundamental equations in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, and this equation is known to be derived from the Wasserstein gradient flow equation with a free energy. This gradient flow equation…

Mathematical Physics · Physics 2024-08-08 Shin-itiro Goto

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 consider a Fokker-Planck equation which is coupled to an externally given time-dependent constraint on its first moment. This constraint introduces a Lagrange-multiplier which renders the equation nonlocal and nonlinear. In this paper we…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2018-11-28 Simon Eberle , Barbara Niethammer , André Schlichting

We show that there is a PDE formulation in terms of Fokker-Planck equations for weak optimal transport problems. The main novelty is that we introduce a minimization problem involving Fokker-Planck equations in the extended sense of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-23 Bohdan Bulanyi

Stochastic transport processes on networked domains (modelled on metric graphs) arise in a variety of applications where diffusion and drift mechanisms interact with an underlying graph structure. The Fokker--Planck equation provides a…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2026-01-29 Ritu Kumari , Cyrille Kenne , Landry Djomegne , Mani Mehra

Motivated by a recent paper by Barrett and S\"uli [J.W. Barrett & E. S\"uli: Existence of global weak solutions to compressible isentropic finitely extensible bead-spring chain models for dilute polymers, Math. Models Methods Appl. Sci., 26…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2016-01-07 Eduard Feireisl , Yong Lu , Endre Süli

This paper introduces Wasserstein variational inference, a new form of approximate Bayesian inference based on optimal transport theory. Wasserstein variational inference uses a new family of divergences that includes both f-divergences and…

We prove the convergence of a Wasserstein gradient flow of a free energy in inhomogeneous media. Both the energy and media can depend on the spatial variable in a fast oscillatory manner. In particular, we show that the gradient-flow…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2025-08-19 Yuan Gao , Nung Kwan Yip

We develop a gradient-flow framework based on the Wasserstein metric for a parabolic moving-boundary problem that models crystal dissolution and precipitation. In doing so we derive a new weak formulation for this moving-boundary problem…

Mathematical Physics · Physics 2010-03-12 Jacobus W. Portegies , Mark A. Peletier

We study the problem of network regression, where one is interested in how the topology of a network changes as a function of Euclidean covariates. We build upon recent developments in generalized regression models on metric spaces based on…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-06-19 Alex G. Zalles , Kai M. Hung , Ann E. Finneran , Lydia Beaudrot , César A. Uribe

We formulate a class of velocity-free finite-particle methods for mass transport problems based on a time-discrete incremental variational principle that combines entropy and the cost of particle transport, as measured by the Wasserstein…

Computational Physics · Physics 2023-05-10 Anna Pandolfi , Laurent Stainier , Michael Ortiz

Considerable progress has recently been made with geometrical approaches to understanding and controlling small out-of-equilibrium systems, but a mathematically rigorous foundation for these methods has been lacking. Towards this end, we…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2022-04-06 Neha S. Wadia , Ryan V. Zarcone , Michael R. DeWeese

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 analyze the sensitivity of solutions to the Fokker-Planck equation with respect to some unknown parameter. Our main result is to provide quantitative upper bounds for the $p$-Wasserstein distance $\mathcal{W}_p$ between two solutions…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2026-02-04 Martin Morange

Starting from first principles, we formulate a theory of wave packet propagation in a nonlinear, disordered medium of any dimension, through the derivation of a Fokker-Planck transport equation. Our theory is based on a diagrammatic…

Disordered Systems and Neural Networks · Physics 2011-10-28 Nicolas Cherroret , Thomas Wellens

We consider the optimization problem of minimizing a functional defined over a family of probability distributions, where the objective functional is assumed to possess a variational form. Such a distributional optimization problem arises…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-02 Zhuoran Yang , Yufeng Zhang , Yongxin Chen , Zhaoran Wang

Hydrodynamics describes the evolution of macroscopic states in non--equilibrium thermodynamics. Following Onsager reciprocal relations, one can formulate a large class of hydrodynamic equations as gradient flows of free energies. In recent…

Mathematical Physics · Physics 2026-03-03 Wuchen Li

We study Markov processes associated with stochastic differential equations, whose non-linearities are gradients of convex functionals. We prove a general result of existence of such Markov processes and a priori estimates on the transition…

Probability · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Luigi Ambrosio , Giuseppe Savare , Lorenzo Zambotti

The incompressible Navier-Stokes (NS) equation is known to govern the hydrodynamic limit of essentially any fluid and its rich non-linear structure has critical implications in both mathematics and physics. The employability of the methods…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2019-06-26 Shounak De , Sumit Dey , Bibhas Ranjan Majhi

This paper reviews different numerical methods for specific examples of Wasserstein gradient flows: we focus on nonlinear Fokker-Planck equations,but also discuss discretizations of the parabolic-elliptic Keller-Segel model and of the…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2020-03-10 Jose A. Carrillo , Daniel Matthes , Marie-Therese Wolfram