Convergence rate of general entropic optimal transport costs

Abstract: We investigate the convergence rate of the optimal entropic cost $v_\varepsilon$ to the optimal transport cost as the noise parameter $\varepsilon \downarrow 0$. We show that for a large class of cost functions $c$ on $\mathbb{R}^d\times \mathbb{R}^d$ (for which optimal plans are not necessarily unique or induced by a transport map) and compactly supported and $L^{\infty}$ marginals, one has $v_\varepsilon-v_0= \frac{d}{2} \varepsilon \log(1/\varepsilon)+ O(\varepsilon)$. Upper bounds are obtained by a block approximation strategy and an integral variant of Alexandrov's theorem. Under an infinitesimal twist condition on $c$, i.e. invertibility of $\nabla_{xy}^2 c(x,y)$, we get the lower bound by establishing a quadratic detachment of the duality gap in $d$ dimensions thanks to Minty's trick.