Time Discretizations of Wasserstein-Hamiltonian Flows

Abstract: We study discretizations of Hamiltonian systems on the probability density manifold equipped with the $L^2$-Wasserstein metric. Based on discrete optimal transport theory, several Hamiltonian systems on graph (lattice) with different weights are derived, which can be viewed as spatial discretizations to the original Hamiltonian systems. We prove the consistency and provide the approximate orders for those discretizations. By regularizing the system using Fisher information, we deduce an explicit lower bound for the density function, which guarantees that symplectic schemes can be used to discretize in time. Moreover, we show desirable long time behavior of these schemes, and demonstrate their performance on several numerical examples.