Bures-Wasserstein Barycenters and Low-Rank Matrix Recovery

Tyler Maunu, Thibaut Le Gouic, Philippe Rigollet

Abstract: We revisit the problem of recovering a low-rank positive semidefinite matrix from rank-one projections using tools from optimal transport. More specifically, we show that a variational formulation of this problem is equivalent to computing a Wasserstein barycenter. In turn, this new perspective enables the development of new geometric first-order methods with strong convergence guarantees in Bures-Wasserstein distance. Experiments on simulated data demonstrate the advantages of our new methodology over existing methods.