Displacement convexity of generalized relative entropies. II (Q2450138)

This paper continues the authors' previous work [Adv. Math. 228, No. 3, 1742--1787 (2011; Zbl 1223.53032)] on the displacement convexity of a new class of entropy functionals inspired by information geometry and statistical mechanics, with applications to synthetic Ricci curvature bounds in metric spaces. The authors introduce the \(\varphi\)-relative entropies \(H_\varphi\) associated to a continuous increasing function \(\varphi:(0,\infty)\to(0,\infty)\). In the previous work, the special case \(\varphi_m(s)=s^{2-m}\) with \(m \in (0,1)\) was considered. In this paper, the displacement convexities of \(\varphi\)-relative entropies are considered. The first main result of the paper states that the displacement convexity of the entropies \(H_\varphi\), for a wide class of functions \(\varphi\) of the above type, is equivalent to the displacement convexity of \(H_{\varphi_m}\). Assuming such a convexity hypothesis, versions of the Talagrand, HWI, logarithmic Sobolev and global Poincaré inequalities are derived. The article concludes with a discussion of the gradient flow and heat equations associated to the entropies \(H_\varphi\).