Bounds for the Wasserstein mean with applications to the Lie-Trotter mean (Q2633819)

Computational and theoretical approaches to the Cartan mean have been studied by many researchers. The natural and canonical mean on a Hadamard space is the least squares mean, called the Riemannian (or Cartan) mean. Motivated by barycenters in the Wasserstein space of probability distributions, \textit{R. Bhatia} et al. [Expo. Math. 37, No. 2, 165--191 (2019; Zbl 1437.15044)] developed the Wasserstein metric and the Wasserstein mean on the open convex cone $P_{m}$ of all $m \times m$ positive definite Hermitian matrices, viewed as a Hadamard space. Here, some properties of the Wasserstein mean are explored. It is also verified that the Wasserstein mean is the multivariate Lie-Trotter mean by finding bounds for the Wasserstein mean. The authors pose the open problem to extend the Wasserstein mean of positive definite matrices to positive invertible operators.