A Regime-Switching Approach to the Unbalanced Schr\"odinger Bridge Problem

Abstract

The unbalanced Schr\"odinger bridge problem (uSBP) seeks to interpolate between a probability measure $\rho_0$ and a sub-probability measure $\rho_T$ while minimizing KL divergence to a reference measure $\mathbf{R}$ on a path space. In this work, we investigate the case where $\mathbf{R}$ is the path measure of a diffusion process with killing, which we interpret as a regime-switching diffusion. In addition to matching the initial and terminal distributions of trajectories that survive up to time $T$, we consider a general constraint $\psi(t,x)$ on the distribution of killing times and/or killing locations. We investigate the uSBPs corresponding to four choices of $\psi$ in detail which reflect different levels of information available to an observer. We also provide a rigorous analysis of the connections and the comparisons among the outcomes of these four cases. Our results are novel in the field of uSBP. The regime-switching approach proposed in this work provides a unified framework for tackling different uSBP scenarios, which not only reconciles but also extends the existing literature on uSBP.