A Monotone Approximation to the Wasserstein Diffusion

Abstract

Von Renesse and the author (Ann. Prob. '09) developed a second order calculus on the Wasserstein space P([0,1]) of probability measures on the unit interval. The basic objects of interest had been Dirichlet form, semigroup and continuous Markov process, called Wasserstein diffusion. The goal of this paper is to derive approximations of these objects on the infinite dimensional space P([0, 1]) in terms of appropriate objects on finite dimensional spaces. In particular, we will approximate the Wasserstein diffusion in terms of interacting systems of Brownian motions.