Wasserstein Gradient Flows of semi-discret energies: evolution of urban areas anduniform quantization

Fuente: arXiv
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Autore principale: Machado, Joao Miguel
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Machado, Joao Miguel
author_facet Machado, Joao Miguel
contents We study the Wasserstein gradient flow of semi-discrete energies in the space of probability measures, that is functionals depending on two measures-one being an absolutely continuous density and the other an atomic measure. These energies appear naturally in the field of urban planning. This is done via the celebrated JKO scheme, for which we prove convergence to a limiting system composed of a parabolic PDE with singular advection coupled with an ODE, also presenting singular dynamics. This is first done under more general assumptions using classical tools, and in a second moment convergence is proven to hold in $L^2_tH^1_x$ for the cases of linear and Porous-Medium type diffusions. We then pass to the study of some qualitative properties of this system, such as the convergence of the atoms towards the baricenters of their corresponding Laguerre cells. We finish this work with extensive numerical simulations that aid in formulating conjectures for the qualitative behavior of this system; in the case of linear diffusion, for instance, we observe a dynamic crystallization phenomenon.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_04088
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Wasserstein Gradient Flows of semi-discret energies: evolution of urban areas anduniform quantization
Machado, Joao Miguel
Analysis of PDEs
Optimization and Control
We study the Wasserstein gradient flow of semi-discrete energies in the space of probability measures, that is functionals depending on two measures-one being an absolutely continuous density and the other an atomic measure. These energies appear naturally in the field of urban planning. This is done via the celebrated JKO scheme, for which we prove convergence to a limiting system composed of a parabolic PDE with singular advection coupled with an ODE, also presenting singular dynamics. This is first done under more general assumptions using classical tools, and in a second moment convergence is proven to hold in $L^2_tH^1_x$ for the cases of linear and Porous-Medium type diffusions. We then pass to the study of some qualitative properties of this system, such as the convergence of the atoms towards the baricenters of their corresponding Laguerre cells. We finish this work with extensive numerical simulations that aid in formulating conjectures for the qualitative behavior of this system; in the case of linear diffusion, for instance, we observe a dynamic crystallization phenomenon.
title Wasserstein Gradient Flows of semi-discret energies: evolution of urban areas anduniform quantization
topic Analysis of PDEs
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.04088