Non-commutative calculus, optimal transport and functional inequalities in dissipative quantum systems

Abstract: We study dynamical optimal transport metrics between density matrices associated to symmetric Dirichlet forms on finite-dimensional $C^*$-algebras. Our setting covers arbitrary skew-derivations and it provides a unified framework that simultaneously generalizes recently constructed transport metrics for Markov chains, Lindblad equations, and the Fermi Ornstein--Uhlenbeck semigroup. We develop a non-nommutative differential calculus that allows us to obtain non-commutative Ricci curvature bounds, logarithmic Sobolev inequalities, transport-entropy inequalities, and spectral gap estimates.