On the Regularity of Optimal Transports between Degenerate Densities

Yash Jhaveri, Ovidiu Savin

Abstract: We study the most common image and informal description of the optimal transport problem for quadratic cost, also known as the second boundary value problem for the Monge--Amp\`{e}re equation---What is the most efficient way to fill a hole with a given pile of sand?---by proving regularity results for optimal transports between degenerate densities. In particular, our work contains an analysis of the setting in which holes and sandpiles are represented by absolutely continuous measures concentrated on bounded convex domains whose densities behave like nonnegative powers of the distance functions to the boundaries of these domains.