Skip to main content
Log in

Maps on probability measures preserving certain distances — a survey and some new results

  • Published:
Acta Scientiarum Mathematicarum Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Borel probability measures living on metric spacesare fundamental mathematical objects. There are several meaningful distance functions that make the collection of the probability measures living on a certain space a metric space. We are interested in the description of the structure of the isometries of such metric spaces. We overview some of the recent results of the topic and we also provide some new ones concerning the Wasserstein distance. More specifically, we consider the space of all Borel probability measures on the unit sphere of a Euclidean space endowed with the Wasserstein metric Wpfor arbitrary p > 1,and we show that the action of a Wasserstein isometry on the set of Dirac measures is induced by an isometry of the underlying unit sphere.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. J. Bertrand and B. Kloeckner, A geometric study of Wasserstein spaces: isometric rigidity in negative curvature, Int. Math. Res. Notices, 2016 (2016), 1368–1386.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  2. R. L. Dobrushin, Prescribing a system of random variables by conditional distributions, Theory Probab. Appl., 15 (1970), 458–486.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. G. Dolinar and L. Molnár, Isometries of the space of distribution functions with respect to the Kolmogorov–Smirnov metric, J. Math. Anal. Appl., 348 (2008), 494–498.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  4. R. J. Fleming and J. E. Jamison, Isometries on Banach Spaces: Function Spaces, Chapman & Hall/CRC Monographs and Surveys in Pure and Applied Mathematics 129, Chapman & Hall/CRC, Boca Raton, FL, 2003.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  5. R. J. Fleming and J. E. Jamison, Isometries on Banach spaces: Vector-valued Function Spaces, Chapman & Hall/CRC Monographs and Surveys in Pure and Applied Mathematics 138, Chapman & Hall/CRC, Boca Raton, FL, 2008.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  6. Gy. P. Gehér, Surjective Kuiper isometries, Houston Journal of Mathematics, (2018), in press.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  7. Gy. P. Gehér and T. Titkos, A characterisation of isometries with respect to the Lévy-Prokhorov metric, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa - Classe di Scienze, (2018), in press.

    Google Scholar 

  8. B. Kloeckner, A geometric study of Wasserstein spaces: Euclidean spaces, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa - Classe di Scienze, IX (2010), 297–323.

    MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  9. L. Molnár, Kolmogorov-Smirnov isometries and affine automorphisms of spaces of distribution functions, Cent. Eur. J. Math., 9 (2011), 789–796.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  10. L. Molnár, Lévy isometries of the space of probability distribution functions, J. Math. Anal. Appl., 380 (2011), 847–852.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  11. L. Molnár, Selected Preserver Problems on Algebraic Structures of Linear Operators and on Function Spaces, Lecture Notes in Mathematics 1895, Springer, 2007.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  12. Yu. V. Prokhorov, Convergence of random processes and limit theorems in probability theory, Theory Probab. Appl., 1 (1956), 157–214.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  13. S. S. Vallender, Calculation of the Wasserstein distance between probability distributions on the line, Theory Probab. Appl., 18 (1973), 784–786.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. C. Villani, Optimal Transport, Old and New, Springer, 2009.

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dániel Virosztek.

Additional information

Dedicated to the memory of Professor Dénes Petz

Communicated by L. Molnár

The author was supported by the ISTFELLOW program of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (project code IC1027FELL01) and partially supported by the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office, NKFIH (grant no. K124152).

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Virosztek, D. Maps on probability measures preserving certain distances — a survey and some new results. ActaSci.Math. 84, 65–80 (2018). https://doi.org/10.14232/actasm-018-753-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.14232/actasm-018-753-y

AMS Subject Classification (2010)

Key words and phrases

Navigation