On the adapted Bures-Wasserstein geometry
Speaker:
Songyan Hou, ETH Zürich
Date and Time:
Thursday, November 6, 2025 - 3:40pm to 3:50pm
Location:
Fields Institute, Room 230
Abstract:
The classical Wasserstein-2 distance between Gaussian distributions admits a closed-form expression, giving rise to the Bures–Wasserstein geometry on the cone of positive semi-definite matrices. Analogously, the adapted Wasserstein-2 distance between Gaussian processes also admits a closed-form formula. This naturally endows the space of lower-triangular matrices with a new metric, which we term the adapted Bures–Wasserstein distance. In this talk, we will explore the geometry of this space through the characterization of absolutely continuous curves, geodesics, and tangent cones.

