Numerical Analysis of the 1-D Parabolic Optimal Transport Problem

Numerical methods for the optimal transport problem is an active area of research. Recent work of Kitagawa and Abedin shows that the solution of a time-dependent equation converges exponentially fast as time goes to infinity to the solution of the optimal transport problem. This suggests a fast numerical algorithm for computing optimal maps; we investigate such an algorithm here in the 1-dimensional case. Specifically, we use a finite difference scheme to solve the time-dependent optimal transport problem and carry out an error analysis of the scheme. A collection of numerical examples is also presented and discussed.