Multidimensional cost geometry
Abstract
In this paper, we study the geometric structure induced by the canonical reciprocal cost function and its natural -dimensional extension. In logarithmic coordinates, the potential depends only on the linear combination , and the associated Hessian metric has rank one at every point. The geometry is intrinsically degenerate and effectively one-dimensional, with an -dimensional null distribution. On the other hand, when the same function is expressed in the original -coordinates, the corresponding Hessian is generically nondegenerate and defines a pseudo-Riemannian metric away from explicit singular hypersurfaces. We further analyze affine and Levi-Civita geodesics and compare their behavior. In particular, affine geodesics in logarithmic coordinates are globally defined, while in -coordinates their behavior is restricted by the domain and the singular set. Finally, we relate the construction to symmetrized Itakura-Saito and Bregman divergences, and give a Fisher-Rao realization of the logarithmic Hessian metric.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.06957,
title = {Multidimensional cost geometry},
author = {Jonathan Washburn and Milan Zlatanović and Philip Beltracchi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.06957},
year = {2026}
}