The Monge-Kantorovich tangent bundle to a measure

Abstract

We study the tangent bundle $T_μ$ to a Radon measure $μ$ in Euclidean space, introduced by Bouchitté, Champion and Jimenez (2005). Its construction, inspired by Monge-Kantorovich optimal transport theory, involves the duality between Lipschitz functions and the so-called Arens-Eells space, a Banach subspace of distributions obtained by completing the set of balanced signed measures. Precisely, a velocity field $σ$ is $μ$-tangent when the divergence of $σμ$ lies in the Arens-Eells space. The tangent bundle $T_μ$ defined $μ$-almost everywhere provides a local projection that allows to construct a $μ$-tangential gradient operator on Lipschitz functions that is weakly continuous and enjoys integration by parts. In this paper, we introduce a new quantitative estimate involving the tangential and normal components of a given velocity vector field $σ\in L^1_μ(\mathbb{R}^d)$. Specifically, we show that the tangential condition $σ\in T_μ$ holding $μ$ a.e. is equivalent to each of the following two conditions: the convergence in the Arens-Eells space of $h^{-1} \left((id+h σ)_{\#} μ- μ\right)$ as $h \to 0$, and the differentiability of Lipschitz functions along $σ$. Moreover, given a field of non-tangent directions, we construct a Lipschitz function that is not differentiable on a large set, confirming that $T_μ$ agrees with the decomposability bundle of Alberti and Marchese. We finally relate $T_μ$ to the tangent measures of Preiss and survey further properties of the tangential differential calculus.