An external dual charge approach to the optimal transport with Coulomb cost

Abstract

In this paper, we study the multimarginal optimal transport with Coulomb cost, also known in the physics literature as the Strictly-Correlated Electrons (SCE) functional. We prove that the dual Kantorovich potential is an electrostatic potential induced by an external charge density, which we call the dual charge. We study its properties and use it to discretize the potential in one and three space dimensions.