Abstract view
First Variation Formula in Wasserstein Spaces over Compact Alexandrov Spaces
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Published:2011-06-08
Printed: Dec 2012
Nicola Gigli,
Institut für Angewandte Mathematik, Universität Bonn, Endenicher Allee 60, 53115 Bonn, Germany
Shin-Ichi Ohta,
Department of Mathematics, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan
Abstract
We extend results proved by the second author (Amer. J. Math., 2009)
for nonnegatively curved Alexandrov spaces
to general compact Alexandrov spaces $X$ with curvature bounded
below.
The gradient flow of a geodesically convex functional on the quadratic Wasserstein
space $(\mathcal P(X),W_2)$ satisfies the evolution variational inequality.
Moreover, the gradient flow enjoys uniqueness and contractivity.
These results are obtained by proving a first variation formula for
the Wasserstein distance.