Regularity of optimal transportation between spaces with different dimensions

Brendan Pass

Published 2010-08-09, updated 2010-08-25Version 2

We study the regularity of solutions to an optimal transportation problem where the dimension of the source is larger than that of the target. We demonstrate that if the target is $c$-convex, then the source has a canonical foliation whose co-dimension is equal to the dimension of the target and the problem reduces to an optimal transportation problem between spaces with equal dimensions. If the $c$-convexity condition fails, we do not expect regularity for arbitrary smooth marginals, but, in the case where the source is 2-dimensional and the target is 1 dimensional, we identify sufficient conditions on the marginals and cost to ensure that the optimal map is continuous.