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Related papers: Variational Analysis in the Wasserstein Hierarchy

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Persistence diagrams, an important summary in topological data analysis, consist of a set of ordered pairs, each with positive multiplicity. Persistence diagrams are obtained via Mobius inversion and may be compared using a one-parameter…

Algebraic Topology · Mathematics 2025-02-19 Peter Bubenik , Alex Elchesen

In this paper we give a new proof of the (strong) displacement convexity of a class of integral functionals defined on a compact Riemannian manifold satisfying a lower Ricci curvature bound. Our approach does not rely on existence and…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2014-09-16 Sara Daneri , Giuseppe Savare

Many scientific systems, such as cellular populations or economic cohorts, are naturally described by probability distributions that evolve over time. Predicting how such a system would have evolved under different forces or initial…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-26 Tristan Luca Saidi , Gonzalo Mena , Larry Wasserman , Florian Gunsilius

We present a novel method for efficiently computing optimal transport maps and Wasserstein barycenters in high-dimensional spaces. Our approach uses conditional normalizing flows to approximate the input distributions as invertible…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-29 Gabriele Visentin , Patrick Cheridito

We develop Brenier theorems on iterated Wasserstein spaces. For a separable Hilbert space $H$ and $N\geq 1$, we construct a full-support probability $\Lambda$ on $P_2^{N}(H)= P_2(... P_2(H)...)$ that is transport regular: for every $Q$ with…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-10-27 Mathias Beiglböck , Gudmund Pammer , Stefan Schrott

Particle-based variational inference offers a flexible way of approximating complex posterior distributions with a set of particles. In this paper we introduce a new particle-based variational inference method based on the theory of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-05-16 Luca Ambrogioni , Umut Guclu , Marcel van Gerven

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 consider the functional of total variation of maps from an interval into a Riemannian submanifold of $\mathbb R^N$. We define a notion of strong solution to the system of equations corresponding to the $L^2$-gradient flow of this…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2025-11-12 Lorenzo Giacomelli , Michał Łasica , Salvador Moll

We introduce a general class of transport distances ${\rm WB}_{\Lambda}$ over the space of positive semi-definite matrix-valued Radon measures $\mathcal{M}(\Omega,\mathbb{S}_+^n)$, called the weighted Wasserstein-Bures distance. Such a…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2023-10-18 Bowen Li , Jun Zou

Wasserstein geometry and information geometry are two important structures to be introduced in a manifold of probability distributions. Wasserstein geometry is defined by using the transportation cost between two distributions, so it…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-01-01 Shun-ichi Amari , Takeru Matsuda

Wasserstein distances are metrics on probability distributions inspired by the problem of optimal mass transportation. Roughly speaking, they measure the minimal effort required to reconfigure the probability mass of one distribution in…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-04-10 Victor M. Panaretos , Yoav Zemel

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

The Wasserstein distances $W_p$ ($p\geq 1$), defined in terms of solution to the Monge-Kantorovich problem, are known to be a useful tool to investigate transport equations. In particular, the Benamou-Brenier formula characterizes the…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2014-11-19 Benedetto Piccoli , Francesco Rossi

We propose a new clustering method based on optimal transportation. We solve optimal transportation with variational principles, and investigate the use of power diagrams as transportation plans for aggregating arbitrary domains into a…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2018-07-27 Liang Mi , Wen Zhang , Xianfeng Gu , Yalin Wang

Two geometrical structures have been extensively studied for a manifold of probability distributions. One is based on the Fisher information metric, which is invariant under reversible transformations of random variables, while the other is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-10-02 Shun-ichi Amari , Ryo Karakida , Masafumi Oizumi

A common feature of methods for analyzing samples of probability density functions is that they respect the geometry inherent to the space of densities. Once a metric is specified for this space, the Fr\'echet mean is typically used to…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-12-20 Alexander Petersen , Hans-Georg Müller

This paper studies distributional model risk in marginal problems, where each marginal measure is assumed to lie in a Wasserstein ball centered at a fixed reference measure with a given radius. Theoretically, we establish several…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-07-04 Yanqin Fan , Hyeonseok Park , Gaoqian Xu

We propose a fully discrete variational scheme for nonlinear evolution equations with gradient flow structure on the space of finite Radon measures on an interval with respect to a generalized version of the Wasserstein distance with…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2016-09-29 Jonathan Zinsl , Daniel Matthes

In this paper we introduce a Wasserstein-type distance on the set of Gaussian mixture models. This distance is defined by restricting the set of possible coupling measures in the optimal transport problem to Gaussian mixture models. We…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-06-15 Julie Delon , Agnes Desolneux

Modeling observations as random distributions embedded within Wasserstein spaces is becoming increasingly popular across scientific fields, as it captures the variability and geometric structure of the data more effectively. However, the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-04-08 François Bachoc , Alberto González-Sanz , Jean-Michel Loubes , Yisha Yao