Map-compatible decomposition of transport paths

Abstract: In the Monge-Kantorovich transport problem, the transport cost is expressed in terms of transport maps or transport plans, which play crucial roles there. A variant of the Monge-Kantorovich problem is the ramified (branching) transport problem that models branching transport systems via transport paths. In this article, we showed that any cycle-free transport path between two atomic measures can be decomposed into the sum of a map-compatible path and a plan-compatible path. Moreover, we showed that each stair-shaped transport path can be decomposed into the difference of two map-compatible transport paths.