A dual formula for the noncommutative transport distance (Q2124857)

In this article, the author establishes a duality formula which expresses the regularised Wasserstein 2-distance between two density matrices induced by an ergodic quantum Markov semigroup (QMS) satisfying a ``detailed balance condition'', a generalisation for self-adjointness, as the supremum of a natural quantity over subsolutions of a noncommutative variant of the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellmann equation. This provides a noncommutative extension of a classical result by Benamou-Brenier. The state space considered in this article is finite-dimensional, built upon a unital \(\ast\)-subalgebra of \(\mathbf{M}_n(\mathbb{C})\). The analysis makes essential use of Alicki's theorem, which expresses the infinitesimal generator of the QMS in terms of a finite collection of ``Bohr frequencies'' and matrices, together with the classical Rockafellar-Fenchel duality theorem.