JKO schemes with general transport costs

We modify the JKO scheme, which is a time discretization of the Wasserstein gradient flow, by replacing the Wasserstein distance with more general transport costs on manifolds. We show when the cost function has a mixed Hessian which defines a Riemannian metric, our modified JKO scheme converges, under suitable conditions, to the corresponding Riemannian Fokker-Planck equation. Thus on a Riemannian manifold one may replace the (squared) Riemannian distance with any cost function which induces the metric. Of interest is when the Riemannian distance is computationally intractable, but a suitable cost has a simple analytic expression. We consider the Fokker-Planck equation on compact submanifolds with the Neumann boundary condition and on complete Riemannian manifolds with a finite drift condition. As an application we consider Hessian manifolds, taking as a cost the Bregman divergence.

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Publication Details

Journal
Calculus of Variations and Partial Differential Equations
Published
2026-02-17
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00526-026-03256-x
Primary Topic
Geometric Analysis and Curvature Flows
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

JKO schemes with general transport costs

Ting‐Kam Leonard Wong, Cale Rankin
Calculus of Variations and Partial Differential Equations
Geometric Analysis and Curvature Flows
article

JKO schemes with general transport costs

Ting‐Kam Leonard Wong, Cale Rankin
article en

Abstract

We modify the JKO scheme, which is a time discretization of the Wasserstein gradient flow, by replacing the Wasserstein distance with more general transport costs on manifolds. We show when the cost function has a mixed Hessian which defines a Riemannian metric, our modified JKO scheme converges, under suitable conditions, to the corresponding Riemannian Fokker-Planck equation. Thus on a Riemannian manifold one may replace the (squared) Riemannian distance with any cost function which induces the metric. Of interest is when the Riemannian distance is computationally intractable, but a suitable cost has a simple analytic expression. We consider the Fokker-Planck equation on compact submanifolds with the Neumann boundary condition and on complete Riemannian manifolds with a finite drift condition. As an application we consider Hessian manifolds, taking as a cost the Bregman divergence.

Calculus of Variations and Partial Differential EquationsVol. 65(3)
University of Toronto (CA), Monash University (AU)
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Openalex Percentile: Top 50%
Geometric Analysis and Curvature Flows
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JKO schemes with general transport costs — Ting‐Kam Leonard Wong, Cale Rankin · Calculus of Variations and Partial Differential Equations (2026) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS