A generalized Legendre duality relation and Gaussian saturation (2409.13611v2)

Abstract: Motivated by the barycenter problem in optimal transportation theory, Kolesnikov--Werner recently extended the notion of the Legendre duality relation for two functions to the case for multiple functions. We further generalize the duality relation and then establish the centered Gaussian saturation property for a Blaschke--Santal\'{o} type inequality associated with it. Our approach to the understanding such a generalized Legendre duality relation is based on our earlier observation that directly links Legendre duality with the inverse Brascamp--Lieb inequality. More precisely, for a large family of degenerate Brascamp--Lieb data, we prove that the centered Gaussian saturation property for the inverse Brascamp--Lieb inequality holds true when inputs are restricted to even and log-concave functions. As an application to convex geometry, we establish the most important case of a conjecture of Kolesnikov and Werner about the Blaschke--Santal\'{o} inequality for multiple even functions as well as multiple symmetric convex bodies. Furthermore, in the direction of information theory and optimal transportation theory, this provides an affirmative answer to another conjecture of Kolesnikov--Werner about a Talagrand type inequality for multiple even probability measures that involves the Wasserstein barycenter.