Geometric mean flows and the Cartan barycenter on the Wasserstein space over positive definite matrices

Abstract

We introduce a class of flows on the Wasserstein space of probability measures with finite first moment on the Cartan-Hadamard Riemannian manifold of positive definite matrices, and consider the problem of differentiability of the corresponding Cartan barycentric trajectory. As a consequence we have a version of Lie-Trotter formula and a related unitarily invariant norm inequality. Furthermore, a fixed point theorem related to the Karcher equation and the Cartan barycentric trajectory is also presented as an application.