Weak Convergence

This chapter reviews the theory of weak convergence in metric spaces. Topics include Skorokhod’s representation theorem, the metrization of spaces of measures, and the concept of tightness of probability measures. The key relation is shown between weak convergence and uniform tightness. Considering the space C of continuous functions in particular, the functional central limit theorem is proved for martingales, together with extensions to the multivariate case.

Spaces of Measures and their Applications to Structured Population Models

Structured population models are transport-type equations often applied to describe evolution of heterogeneous populations of biological cells, animals or humans, including phenomena such as crowd dynamics or pedestrian flows. This book introduces the mathematical underpinnings of these applications, providing a comprehensive analytical framework for structured population models in spaces of Radon measures. The unified approach allows for the study of transport processes on structures that are not vector spaces (such as traffic flow on graphs) and enables the analysis of the numerical algorithms used in applications. Presenting a coherent account of over a decade of research in the area, the text includes appendices outlining the necessary background material and discusses current trends in the theory, enabling graduate students to jump quickly into research.

Linear convergence of accelerated conditional gradient algorithms in spaces of measures

A class of generalized conditional gradient algorithms for the solution of optimization problem in spaces of Radon measures is presented. The method iteratively inserts additional Dirac-delta functions and optimizes the corresponding coefficients. Under general assumptions, a sub-linear [see formula in PDF] rate in the objective functional is obtained, which is sharp in most cases. To improve efficiency, one can fully resolve the finite-dimensional subproblems occurring in each iteration of the method. We provide an analysis for the resulting procedure: under a structural assumption on the optimal solution, a linear [see formula in PDF] convergence rate is obtained locally.

Quantitative statistical stability and linear response for irrational rotations and diffeomorphisms of the circle

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>We prove quantitative statistical stability results for a large class of small <inline-formula><tex-math id="M1">\begin{document}$ C^{0} $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> perturbations of circle diffeomorphisms with irrational rotation numbers. We show that if the rotation number is Diophantine the invariant measure varies in a Hölder way under perturbation of the map and the Hölder exponent depends on the Diophantine type of the rotation number. The set of admissible perturbations includes the ones coming from spatial discretization and hence numerical truncation. We also show linear response for smooth perturbations that preserve the rotation number, as well as for more general ones. This is done by means of classical tools from KAM theory, while the quantitative stability results are obtained by transfer operator techniques applied to suitable spaces of measures with a weak topology.</p>

An optimal transport approach for solving dynamic inverse problems in spaces of measures

In this paper we propose and study a novel optimal transport based regularization of linear dynamic inverse problems. The considered inverse problems aim at recovering a measure valued curve and are dynamic in the sense that (i) the measured data takes values in a time dependent family of Hilbert spaces, and (ii) the forward operators are time dependent and map, for each time, Radon measures into the corresponding data space. The variational regularization we propose is based on dynamic (un-)balanced optimal transport which means that the measure valued curves to recover (i) satisfy the continuity equation, i.e., the Radon measure at time t is advected by a velocity field v and varies with a growth rate g, and (ii) are penalized with the kinetic energy induced by v and a growth energy induced by g. We establish a functional-analytic framework for these regularized inverse problems, prove that minimizers exist and are unique in some cases, and study regularization properties. This framework is applied to dynamic image reconstruction in undersampled magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), modelling relevant examples of time varying acquisition strategies, as well as patient motion and presence of contrast agents.