Pseudo-Riemannian geometry embeds information geometry in optimal transport

Abstract: Optimal transport and information geometry both study geometric structures on spaces of probability distributions. Optimal transport characterizes the cost-minimizing movement from one distribution to another, while information geometry originates from coordinate-invariant properties of statistical inference. Their connections and applications in statistics and machine learning have started to gain more attention. In this paper we give a new differential geometric connection between the two fields. Namely, the pseudo-Riemannian framework of Kim and McCann, a geometric perspective on the fundamental Ma-Trudinger-Wang (MTW) condition in the regularity theory of optimal transport maps, encodes the dualistic structure of statistical manifold. This general relation is described using the natural framework of $c$-divergence, a divergence defined by an optimal transport map. As a by-product, we obtain a new information-geometric interpretation of the MTW tensor. This connection sheds light on old and new aspects of information geometry. The dually flat geometry of Bregman divergence corresponds to the quadratic cost and the pseudo-Euclidean space, and the $L^{(\alpha)}$-divergence introduced by Pal and the first author has constant sectional curvature in a sense to be made precise. In these cases we give a geometric interpretation of the information-geometric curvature in terms of the divergence between a primal-dual pair of geodesics.