In this paper, we study a connection between disintegration of measures and geometric properties of probability spaces. We prove a disintegration theorem, addressing disintegration from the perspective of an optimal transport problem. We look at the disintegration of transport plans, which are used to define and study disintegration maps. Using these objects, we study the regularity and absolute continuity of disintegration of measures. In particular, we exhibit conditions for which the disintegration map is weakly continuous and one can obtain a path of measures given by this map. We show a rigidity condition for the disintegration of measures to be given into absolutely continuous measures.

The game of Cops and Robber is traditionally played on a finite graph. The purpose of this article is to introduce and analyze the game that is played on an arbitrary geodesic space (a compact, path-connected space endowed with intrinsic metric). It is shown that the game played on metric graphs is essentially the same as the discrete game played on abstract graphs and that for every compact geodesic surface there is an integer c such that c cops can win the game against one robber, and c only depends on the genus g of the surface. It is shown that $c=3$ for orientable surfaces of genus $0$ or $1$ and nonorientable surfaces of crosscap number $1$ or $2$ (with any number of boundary components) and that $c=O(g)$ and that $c=\Omega (\sqrt {g})$ when the genus g is larger. The main motivation for discussing this game is to view the cop number (the minimum number of cops needed to catch the robber) as a new geometric invariant describing how complex is the geodesic space.

We derive a global higher regularity result for weak solutions of the linear relaxed micromorphic model on smooth domains. The governing equations consist of a linear elliptic system of partial differential equations that is coupled with a system of Maxwell-type. The result is obtained by combining a Helmholtz decomposition argument with regularity results for linear elliptic systems and the classical embedding of $H(\operatorname {div};\Omega )\cap H_0(\operatorname {curl};\Omega )$ into $H^1(\Omega )$.

$c$-cyclical monotonicity is the most important optimality condition for an optimal transport plan. While the proof of necessity is relatively easy, the proof of sufficiency is often more difficult or even elusive. We present here a new approach, and we show how known results are derived in this new framework and how this approach allows to prove sufficiency in situations previously not treatable.

We investigate the convergence rate of multi-marginal optimal transport costs that are regularized with the Boltzmann–Shannon entropy, as the noise parameter $\varepsilon $ tends to $0$. We establish lower and upper bounds on the difference with the unregularized cost of the form $C\varepsilon \log (1/\varepsilon )+O(\varepsilon )$ for some explicit dimensional constants C depending on the marginals and on the ground cost, but not on the optimal transport plans themselves. Upper bounds are obtained for Lipschitz costs or locally semiconcave costs for a finer estimate, and lower bounds for $\mathscr {C}^2$ costs satisfying some signature condition on the mixed second derivatives that may include degenerate costs, thus generalizing results previously in the two marginals case and for nondegenerate costs. We obtain in particular matching bounds in some typical situations where the optimal plan is deterministic.

We study the turnpike phenomenon for optimal control problems with mean-field dynamics that are obtained as the limit $N\rightarrow \infty$ of systems governed by a large number $N$ of ordinary differential equations. We show that the optimal control problems with large time horizons give rise to a turnpike structure of the optimal state and the optimal control. For the proof, we use the fact that the turnpike structure for the problems on the level of ordinary differential equations is preserved under the corresponding mean-field limit.

We prove that for nonlinear elastic energies with strong enough energetic control of the outer distortion of admissible deformations, almost everywhere global invertibility as constraint can be obtained in the $\Gamma$-limit of the elastic energy with an added nonlocal self-repulsion term with asymptocially vanishing coefficient. The self-repulsion term considered here formally coincides with a Sobolev–Slobodeckiĭ seminorm of the inverse deformation. Variants near the boundary or on the surface of the domain are also studied.

We solve non-Markovian optimal switching problems in discrete time on an infinite horizon, when the decision-maker is risk-aware and the filtration is general, and establish existence and uniqueness of solutions for the associated reflected backward stochastic difference equations. An example application to hydropower planning is provided.

We introduce novel multi-agent interaction models of entropic spatially inhomogeneous evolutionary undisclosed games and their quasi-static limits. These evolutions vastly generalise first- and second-order dynamics. Besides the well-posedness of these novel forms of multi-agent interactions, we are concerned with the learnability of individual payoff functions from observation data. We formulate the payoff learning as a variational problem, minimising the discrepancy between the observations and the predictions by the payoff function. The inferred payoff function can then be used to simulate further evolutions, which are fully data-driven. We prove convergence of minimising solutions obtained from a finite number of observations to a mean-field limit, and the minimal value provides a quantitative error bound on the data-driven evolutions. The abstract framework is fully constructive and numerically implementable. We illustrate this on computational examples where a ground truth payoff function is known and on examples where this is not the case, including a model for pedestrian movement.

A stochastic model predictive control (SMPC) algorithm is developed to solve the problem of three-dimensional spacecraft rendezvous and docking with unbounded disturbance. In particular, we only assume that the mean and variance information of the disturbance is available. In other words, the probability density function of the disturbance distribution is not fully known. Obstacle avoidance is considered during the rendezvous phase. Line-of-sight cone, attitude control bandwidth, and thrust direction constraints are considered during the docking phase. A distributionally robust optimization based algorithm is then proposed by reformulating the SMPC problem into a convex optimization problem. Numerical examples show that the proposed method improves the existing model predictive control based strategy and the robust model predictive control based strategy in the presence of disturbance.

Let $\mathbb {S}^{d-1}$ denote the unit sphere in Euclidean space $\mathbb {R}^d$, $d\geq 2$, equipped with surface measure $\sigma _{d-1}$. An instance of our main result concerns the regularity of solutions of the convolution equation

$$\begin{align*}a\cdot(f\sigma_{d-1})^{\ast {(q-1)}}\big\vert_{\mathbb{S}^{d-1}}=f,\text{ a.e. on }\mathbb{S}^{d-1}, \end{align*}$$

$a\in C^\infty (\mathbb {S}^{d-1})$

$q\geq 2(d+1)/(d-1)$

$f\in L^2(\mathbb {S}^{d-1})$

$C^\infty (\mathbb {S}^{d-1})$

$\mathbb {S}^{d-1}$

$C^\infty $

We study an ergodic singular control problem with constraint of a regular one-dimensional linear diffusion. The constraint allows the agent to control the diffusion only at the jump times of an independent Poisson process. Under relatively weak assumptions, we characterize the optimal solution as an impulse-type control policy, where it is optimal to exert the exact amount of control needed to push the process to a unique threshold. Moreover, we discuss the connection of the present problem to ergodic singular control problems, and illustrate the results with different well-known cost and diffusion structures.

Mean-field games (MFGs) and the best-reply strategy (BRS) are two methods of describing competitive optimisation of systems of interacting agents. The latter can be interpreted as an approximation of the respective MFG system. In this paper, we present an analysis and comparison of the two approaches in the stationary case. We provide novel existence and uniqueness results for the stationary boundary value problems related to the MFG and BRS formulations, and we present an analytical and numerical comparison of the two paradigms in some specific modelling situations.

In this paper, we consider projective deformation of the geodesic system of Finsler spaces by holonomy invariant functions. Starting with a Finsler spray $S$ and a holonomy invariant function ${\mathcal{P}}$, we investigate the metrizability property of the projective deformation $\widetilde{S}=S-2\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}{\mathcal{P}}{\mathcal{C}}$. We prove that for any holonomy invariant nontrivial function ${\mathcal{P}}$ and for almost every value $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}\in \mathbb{R}$, such deformation is not Finsler metrizable. We identify the cases where such deformation can lead to a metrizable spray. In these cases, the holonomy invariant function ${\mathcal{P}}$ is necessarily one of the principal curvatures of the geodesic structure.

We consider a two-player zero-sum stochastic differential game with a random planning horizon and diffusive state variable dynamics. The random planning horizon is a function of a non-negative continuous random variable, which is assumed to be independent of the Brownian motion driving the state variable dynamics. We study this game using a combination of dynamic programming and viscosity solution techniques. Under some mild assumptions, we prove that the value of the game exists and is the unique viscosity solution of a certain nonlinear partial differential equation of Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman–Isaacs type.

The classical Monge–Kantorovich (MK) problem as originally posed is concerned with how best to move a pile of soil or rubble to an excavation or fill with the least amount of work relative to some cost function. When the cost is given by the square of the Euclidean distance, one can define a metric on densities called the Wasserstein distance. In this note, we formulate a natural matrix counterpart of the MK problem for positive-definite density matrices. We prove a number of results about this metric including showing that it can be formulated as a convex optimisation problem, strong duality, an analogue of the Poincaré–Wirtinger inequality and a Lax–Hopf–Oleinik–type result.

Let Ω ⊂ ℝn be a bounded Lipschitz domain. Let $L: {\mathbb R}^n\rightarrow \bar {\mathbb R}= {\mathbb R}\cup \{+\infty \}$ be a continuous function with superlinear growth at infinity, and consider the functional $\mathcal {I}(u)=\int \nolimits _\Omega L(Du)$, u ∈ W1,1(Ω). We provide necessary and sufficient conditions on L under which, for all f ∈ W1,1(Ω) such that $\mathcal {I}(f) < +\infty $, the problem of minimizing $\mathcal {I}(u)$ with the boundary condition u|∂Ω = f has a solution which is stable, or – alternatively – is such that all of its solutions are stable. By stability of $\mathcal {I}$ at u we mean that $u_k\rightharpoonup u$ weakly in W1,1(Ω) together with $\mathcal {I}(u_k)\to \mathcal {I}(u)$ imply uk → u strongly in W1,1(Ω). This extends to general boundary data some results obtained by Cellina and Cellina and Zagatti. Furthermore, with respect to the preceding literature on existence results for scalar variational problems, we drop the assumption that the relaxed functional admits a continuous minimizer.

In this paper we study continuous-time two-player zero-sum optimal switching games on a finite horizon. Using the theory of doubly reflected backward stochastic differential equations with interconnected barriers, we show that this game has a value and an equilibrium in the players’ switching controls.

It is proved that c-cyclical monotonicity is a sufficient condition for optimality in the multi-marginal optimal transport problem with Coulomb repulsive cost. The notion of c-splitting set and some mild regularity property are the tools. The result may be extended to Coulomb like costs.

In this paper we study constrained variational problems that are principally motivated by nonlinear elasticity theory. We examine, in particular, the relationship between the positivity of the Jacobian det ∇u and the uniqueness and regularity of energy minimizers u that are either twist maps or shear maps. We exhibit explicit twist maps, defined on two-dimensional annuli, that are stationary points of an appropriate energy functional and whose Jacobian vanishes on a set of positive measure in the annulus. Within the class of shear maps we precisely characterize the unique global energy minimizer $u_{\sigma }: \Omega \to {\open R}^2$ in a model, two-dimensional case. We exploit the Jacobian constraint $\det \nabla u_{\sigma} \gt 0$ a.e. to obtain regularity results that apply ‘up to the boundary’ of domains with corners. It is shown that the unique shear map minimizer has the properties that (i) $\det \nabla u_{\sigma }$ is strictly positive on one part of the domain Ω, (ii) $\det \nabla u_{\sigma } = 0$ necessarily holds on the rest of Ω, and (iii) properties (i) and (ii) combine to ensure that $\nabla u_{\sigma }$ is not continuous on the whole domain.