Regularity of optimal transportation between spaces with different dimensions

Abstract

We study the regularity of solutions to an optimal transportation problem where the dimension of the source is larger than that of the target. We demonstrate that if the target is $c$-convex, then the source has a canonical foliation whose co-dimension is equal to the dimension of the target and the problem reduces to an optimal transportation problem between spaces with equal dimensions. If the $c$-convexity condition fails, we do not expect regularity for arbitrary smooth marginals, but, in the case where the source is 2-dimensional and the target is 1 dimensional, we identify sufficient conditions on the marginals and cost to ensure that the optimal map is continuous.