Schrödinger bridge with transport relaxation

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Jiang, Yifan, Xu, Renyuan, Zhang, Luhao
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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_version_ 1866912888653873152
author Jiang, Yifan
Xu, Renyuan
Zhang, Luhao
author_facet Jiang, Yifan
Xu, Renyuan
Zhang, Luhao
contents Motivated by modern machine learning applications where we only have access to empirical measures constructed from finite samples, we relax the marginal constraints of the classical Schrödinger bridge problem by penalizing the transport cost between the bridge's marginals and the prescribed marginals. We derive a duality formula for this transport-relaxed bridge and demonstrate that it reduces to a finite-dimensional concave optimization problem when the prescribed marginals are discrete and the reference distribution is absolutely continuous. We establish the existence and uniqueness of solutions for both the primal and dual problems. Moreover, as the penalty blows up, we characterize the limiting bridge as the solution to a discrete Schrödinger bridge problem and identify a leading-order logarithmic divergence. Finally, we propose gradient ascent and Sinkhorn-type algorithms to numerically solve the transport-relaxed Schrödinger bridge, establishing a linear convergence rate for both algorithms.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_08118
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Schrödinger bridge with transport relaxation
Jiang, Yifan
Xu, Renyuan
Zhang, Luhao
Probability
Optimization and Control
49Q22, 28D20, 94A17
Motivated by modern machine learning applications where we only have access to empirical measures constructed from finite samples, we relax the marginal constraints of the classical Schrödinger bridge problem by penalizing the transport cost between the bridge's marginals and the prescribed marginals. We derive a duality formula for this transport-relaxed bridge and demonstrate that it reduces to a finite-dimensional concave optimization problem when the prescribed marginals are discrete and the reference distribution is absolutely continuous. We establish the existence and uniqueness of solutions for both the primal and dual problems. Moreover, as the penalty blows up, we characterize the limiting bridge as the solution to a discrete Schrödinger bridge problem and identify a leading-order logarithmic divergence. Finally, we propose gradient ascent and Sinkhorn-type algorithms to numerically solve the transport-relaxed Schrödinger bridge, establishing a linear convergence rate for both algorithms.
title Schrödinger bridge with transport relaxation
topic Probability
Optimization and Control
49Q22, 28D20, 94A17
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.08118