We study a new notion of Ricci curvature that applies to Markov chains on discrete spaces. This notion relies on geodesic convexity of the entropy and is analogous to the one introduced by Lott, Sturm, and Villani for geodesic measure spaces. In order to apply to the discrete setting, the role of the Wasserstein metric is taken over by a different metric, having the property that continuous time Markov chains are gradient flows of the entropy.
Using this notion of Ricci curvature we prove discrete analogues of fundamental results by Bakry--Emery and Otto--Villani. Furthermore we show that Ricci curvature bounds are preserved under tensorisation. As a special case we obtain the sharp Ricci curvature lower bound for the discrete hypercube.
In the present article, we provide a characterization of a lower $N$-weighted Ricci curvature bound for $N \in ]-\infty,1]\cup[n,+\infty]$ with $\varepsilon$-range introduced by Lu-Minguzzi-Ohta in terms of a convexity of entropies over Wasserstein space. We further derive various interpolation inequalities and functional inequalities.
It is shown that a Banach space admits an equivalent norm whose modulus of uniform convexity has power-type p if and only if it is Markov p-convex. Counterexamples are constructed to natural questions related to isomorphic uniform convexity of metric spaces, showing in particular that tree metrics fail to have the dichotomy property.
We show that an infinite weighted tree admits a bi-Lipschitz embedding into Hilbert space if and only if it does not contain arbitrarily large complete binary trees with uniformly bounded distortion. We also introduce a new metric invariant called Markov convexity, and show how it can be used to compute the Euclidean distortion of any metric tree up to universal factors.
We compute the Markov convexity invariant of the continuous infinite dimensional Heisenberg group $\mathbb{H}_\infty$ to show that it is Markov 4-convex and cannot be Markov $p$-convex for any $p < 4$. As Markov convexity is a biLipschitz invariant and Hilbert space is Markov 2-convex, this gives a different proof of the classical theorem of Pansu and Semmes that the Heisenberg group does not admit a biLipschitz embedding into any Euclidean space. The Markov convexity lower bound will follow from exhibiting an explicit embedding of Laakso graphs $G_n$ into $\mathbb{H}_\infty$ that has distorti…
In this paper we investigate Lott-Sturm-Villani's synthetic lower Ricci curvature bound on Riemannian manifolds with boundary. We prove several measure rigidity results for some important functional and geometric inequalities, which completely characterize ${\rm CD}(K, \infty)$ condition and non-collapsed ${\rm CD}(K, N)$ condition on Riemannian manifolds with boundary. In particular, using $L^1$-optimal transportation theory, we prove that ${\rm CD}(K, \infty)$ condition implies geodesical convexity.
We define the Ricci curvature of Markov chains on metric spaces as a local contraction coefficient of the random walk acting on the space of probability measures equipped with a Wasserstein transportation distance. For Brownian motion on a Riemannian manifold this gives back the value of Ricci curvature of a tangent vector. Examples of positively curved spaces for this definition include the discrete cube and discrete versions of the Ornstein--Uhlenbeck process. Moreover this generalization is consistent with the Bakry--Émery Ricci curvature for Brownian motion with a drift on a Riemannian man…
We introduce the notions of `super-Ricci flows' and `Ricci flows' for time-dependent families of metric measure spaces $(X,d_t,m_t)_{t\in I}$. The former property is proven to be stable under suitable space-time versions of mGH-convergence. Uniformly bounded families of super-Ricci flows are compact. In the spirit of the synthetic lower Ricci bounds of Lott-Sturm-Villani for static metric measure spaces, the defining property for super-Ricci flows is the `dynamic convexity' of the Boltzmann entropy ${\mathrm Ent}(.|m_t)$ regarded as a functions on the time-dependent geodesic space $({\mathcal …
We study various transport-information inequalities under three different notions of Ricci curvature in the discrete setting: the curvature-dimension condition of Bakry and Émery, the exponential curvature-dimension condition of Bauer \textit{et al.} and the coarse Ricci curvature of Ollivier. We prove that under a curvature-dimension condition or coarse Ricci curvature condition, an $L_1$ transport-information inequality holds; while under an exponential curvature-dimension condition, some weak-transport information inequalities hold. As an application, we establish a Bonnet-Meyer's theorem u…
We show that every graded nilpotent Lie group $G$ of step $r$, equipped with a left invariant metric homogeneous with respect to the dilations induced by the grading, (this includes all Carnot groups with Carnot-Caratheodory metric) is Markov $p$-convex for all $p \in [2r,\infty)$. We also show that this is sharp whenever $G$ is a Carnot group with $r \leq 3$, a free Carnot group, or a jet space group; such groups are not Markov $p$-convex for any $p \in (0,2r)$. This continues a line of research started by Li who proved this sharp result when $G$ is the Heisenberg group. As corollaries, we ob…
We extend the range of $N$ to negative values in the $(K,N)$-convexity (in the sense of Erbar--Kuwada--Sturm), the weighted Ricci curvature $Ric_N$ and the curvature-dimension condition $CD(K,N)$. We generalize a number of results in the case of $N>0$ to this setting, including Bochner's inequality, the Brunn--Minkowski inequality and the equivalence between $Ric_N \ge K$ and $CD(K,N)$. We also show an expansion bound for gradient flows of Lipschitz $(K,N)$-convex functions.
We analyze both continuous and discrete-time Ollivier-Ricci curvatures of locally-finite weighted graphs $\G$ equipped with a given distance "$\dist$" (w.r.t. which $\G$ is metrically complete) and for general random walks. We show the continuous-time Ollivier-Ricci curvature is well-defined for a large class of Markovian and non-Markovian random walks and provide a criterion for existence of continuous-time Ollivier-Ricci curvature; the said results generalize the previous rather limited constructions in the literature. In addition, important properties of both discrete-time and continuous-ti…
During the last decade Optimal Transport had a relevant role in the study of geometry of singular spaces that culminated with the Lott-Sturm-Villani theory. The latter is built on the characterisation of Ricci curvature lower bounds in terms of displacement convexity of certain entropy functionals along $W_{2}$-geodesics. Substantial recent advancements in the theory (localization paradigm and local-to-global property) have been obtained considering the different point of view of $L^1$-Optimal transport problems yielding a different curvature dimension $\mathsf{CD}^{1}(K,N)$ [8] formulated in …
We compare two approaches to Ricci curvature on non-smooth spaces, in the case of the discrete hypercube $\{0,1\}^N$. While the coarse Ricci curvature of the first author readily yields a positive value for curvature, the displacement convexity property of Lott, Sturm and the second author could not be fully implemented. Yet along the way we get new results of a combinatorial and probabilistic nature, including a curved Brunn--Minkowski inequality on the discrete hypercube.
In this essay, we discuss the notion of optimal transport on geodesic measure spaces and the associated (2-)Wasserstein distance. We then examine displacement convexity of the entropy functional on the space of probability measures. In particular, we give a detailed proof that the Lott-Villani-Sturm notion of generalized Ricci bounds agree with the classical notion on smooth manifolds. We also give the proof that generalized Ricci bounds are preserved under Gromov-Hausdorff convergence. In particular, we examine in detail the space of probability measures over the interval, $P(X)$ equipped wit…
We characterize the convexity of functions and the monotonicity of vector fields on metric measure spaces with Riemannian Ricci curvature bounded from below. Our result offers a new approach to deal with some rigidity theorems such as `splitting theorem' and `volume cone implies metric cone theorem' in non-smooth context.
In this paper, we explore the relationship between one of the most elementary and important properties of graphs, the presence and relative frequency of triangles, and a combinatorial notion of Ricci curvature. We employ a definition of generalized Ricci curvature proposed by Ollivier in a general framework of Markov processes and metric spaces and applied in graph theory by Lin-Yau. In analogy with curvature notions in Riemannian geometry, we interpret this Ricci curvature as a control on the amount of overlap between neighborhoods of two neighboring vertices. It is therefore naturally relate…
We characterize lower bounds for the Bakry-Emery Ricci tensor of nonsymmetric diffusion operators by convexity of entropy on the $L^2$-Wasserstein space, and define a curvature-dimension condition for general metric measure spaces together with a square integrable $1$-form in the sense of \cite{giglinonsmooth}. This extends the Lott-Sturm-Villani approach for lower Ricci curvature bounds of metric measure spaces. In generalized smooth context, consequences are new Bishop-Gromov estimates, pre-compactness under measured Gromov-Hausdorff convergence, and a Bonnet-Myers theorem that generalizes p…
We show that if the random walk on a graph has positive coarse Ricci curvature in the sense of Ollivier, then the stationary measure satisfies a W^1 transport-entropy inequality. Peres and Tetali have conjectured a stronger consequence, that a modified log-Sobolev inequality (MLSI) should hold, in analogy with the setting of Markov diffusions. We discuss how our entropy interpolation approach suggests a natural attack on the MLSI conjecture.
We construct geodesics in the Wasserstein space of probability measure along which all the measures have an upper bound on their density that is determined by the densities of the endpoints of the geodesic. Using these geodesics we show that a local Poincaré inequality and the measure contraction property follow from the Ricci curvature bounds defined by Sturm. We also show for a large class of convex functionals that a local Poincaré inequality is implied by the weak displacement convexity of the functional.
We consider metrics which are preserved under a $p$-Wasserstein transport map, up to a possible contraction. In the case $p=1$ this corresponds to a metric which is uniformly curved in the sense of coarse Ricci curvature. We investigate the existence of such metrics in the more general sense of pseudo-metrics, where the distance between distinct points is allowed to be 0, and show the existence for general Markov chains on compact Polish spaces. Further we discuss a notion of algebraic reducibility and its relation to the existence of multiple true pseudo-metrics with constant curvature. Conve…
In this paper we introduce a synthetic notion of Riemannian Ricci bounds from below for metric measure spaces (X,d,m) which is stable under measured Gromov-Hausdorff convergence and rules out Finsler geometries. It can be given in terms of an enforcement of the Lott, Sturm and Villani geodesic convexity condition for the entropy coupled with the linearity of the heat flow. Besides stability, it enjoys the same tensorization, global-to-local and local-to-global properties. In these spaces, that we call RCD(K,\infty) spaces, we prove that the heat flow (which can be equivalently characterized ei…
In this note we show that in metric measure spaces satisfying the reduced curvature-dimension condition CD*(K,N) we always have geodesics in the Wasserstein space of probability measures that satisfy the critical convexity inequality of CD*(K,N) also for intermediate times and in addition the measures along these geodesics have an upper-bound on their densities. This upper-bound depends on the bounds for the densities of the end-point measures, the lower-bound K for the Ricci-curvature, the upper-bound N for the dimension, and on the diameter of the union of the supports of the end-point measu…
