Multi-marginal optimal transportation and applications.

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This proposal revolves around the geometry and smoothness of solutions to multi-marginal optimal transportation problems. This is the problem of aligning several prescribed mass distributions, or marginals, as efficiently as possible, relative to a given surplus function. To help illustrate the problem, suppose a large construction company employs, for example, carpenters, electricians and plumbers in order to build a large number of houses. The company, then, needs to make teams; a team consists of one of each type of trades person and will be responsible for building one house. Of course, different combinations of workers will be more or less efficient and it is in the company's best interests to construct its teams such that the overall process is as efficient as possible. My research focuses on the structure of this optimal alignment. Is it optimal, for example, for each carpenter to work with exactly one electrician and one plumber, or is it better for some carpenters to work part-time on several different teams? In the first case, is the assignment of, say, electricians to the carpenters they work with smooth? What happens as the size of each team (ie, the number of types of workers) becomes very large? Surprising, problems of this type interact deeply with mathematical fields such as partial differential equations, geometry and probability and have numerous potential applications in economics, mathematical finance, statistical physics and image processing. However, despite great progress on similar problems with only two types of workers, relatively little is known in the case where teams consist of three or more types of tradespeople. The primary goal of this research is the advancement of scientific knowledge; however, there are many promising, potential applications emerging in the areas mentioned above.