Nicola Gigli

Luigi Ambrosio

Giuseppe Savare

This book is devoted to a theory of gradient ?ows in spaces which are not nec- sarily endowed with a natural linear or di?erentiable structure. It is made of two parts, the ?rst one concerning gradient ?ows in metric spaces and the second one 2 1 devoted to gradient ?ows in the L -Wasserstein space of probability measures on p a separable Hilbert space X (we consider the L -Wasserstein distance, p? (1,?), as well). The two parts have some connections, due to the fact that the Wasserstein space of probability measures provides an important model to which the “metric” theory applies, but the book is conceived in such a way that the two parts can be read independently, the ?rst one by the reader more interested to Non-Smooth Analysis and Analysis in Metric Spaces, and the second one by the reader more oriented to theapplications in Partial Di?erential Equations, Measure Theory and Probability.

In Metric Spaces and in the Space of Probability Measures

Gradient Flows

The book is devoted to the theory of gradient flows in the general framework of metric spaces, and in the more specific setting of the space of probability measures, which provide a surprising link between optimal transportation theory and many evolutionary PDE's related to (non)linear diffusion. Particular emphasis is given to the convergence of the implicit time discretization method and to the error estimates for this discretization, extending the well established theory in Hilbert spaces. The book is split in two main parts that can be read independently of each other.

The author develops a rigorous second order analysis on the space of probability measures on a Riemannian manifold endowed with the quadratic optimal transport distance $W_2$. The discussion includes: definition of covariant derivative, discussion of the problem of existence of parallel transport, calculus of the Riemannian curvature tensor, differentiability of the exponential map and existence of Jacobi fields. This approach does not require any smoothness assumption on the measures considered.

Nicola Gigli

About

Books

Join the club