Necessary condition for rectifiability involving Wasserstein distance $W_2$

Abstract

A Radon measure $\mu$ is $n$-rectifiable if $\mu\ll\mathcal{H}^n$ and $\mu$-almost all of $\text{supp}\,\mu$ can be covered by Lipschitz images of $\mathbb{R}^n$. In this paper we give a necessary condition for rectifiability in terms of the so-called $\alpha_2$ numbers -- coefficients quantifying flatness using Wasserstein distance $W_2$. In a recent article we showed that the same condition is also sufficient for rectifiability, and so we get a new characterization of rectifiable measures.