Mathematics

The matching problem consists in finding the optimal coupling between a random distribution of N points in a d-dimensional domain and another (possibly random) distribution. There is a large literature on the asymptotic behaviour as N tends to infinity of the expectation of the minimum cost, and the results depend on the dimension d and the choice of cost, in this random optimal transport problem, with challenging open problems. In a recent work, Caracciolo, Lucibello, Parisi and Sicuro proposed an ansatz for the expansion in N of the expectation. I will illustrate how a combination of semigroup smoothing techniques and Dacorogna-Moser interpolation provide first rigorous results for this ansatz.Joint work with Federico Stra and Dario Trevisan, ArXiv:1611.04960