Variational approach to regularity of optimal transport maps: general cost functions

Felix Otto, Maxime Prod'homme, Tobias Ried

Published 2020-07-22Version 1

We extend the variational approach to regularity for optimal transport maps initiated by Goldman and the first author to the case of general cost functions. Our main result is an $\epsilon$-regularity result for optimal transport maps between H\"older continuous densities slightly more quantitative than the result by De Philippis-Figalli. One of the new contributions is the use of almost-minimality: if the cost is quantitatively close to the Euclidean cost function, a minimizer for the optimal transport problem with general cost is an almost-minimizer for the one with quadratic cost. This further highlights the connection between our variational approach and De Giorgi's strategy for $\epsilon$-regularity of minimal surfaces.