Curvature bounds for configuration spaces (Q493185)

The authors investigate various curvature properties of the configuration space \(\Upsilon\) of a Riemannian manifold \(M\), where \(\Upsilon\) is equipped with a natural Riemannian geometry induced by that on \(M\) as in [\textit{S. A. Albeverio} et al., J. Funct. Anal. 154, No. 2, 444--500 (1998; Zbl 0914.58028)]. Rather than introducing curvature tensors on \(\Upsilon\), they show that various inequalities characterising lower curvature bounds on \(M\) induce analogous ones on \(\Upsilon\). Firstly, it is shown that if the sectional curvature of \(M\) is bounded from below by \(K\), then the Alexandrov curvature of \(\Upsilon\) is bounded from below by \(\min\{K,0\}\). Moreover, it is shown that if the Ricci curvature of \(M\) is bounded from below, then Bochner's inequality on \(M\) may be lifted to one on \(\Upsilon\) provided the test functions are taken to be cylinder functions; in this vein a gradient estimate for the heat semigroup on \(M\) and \(L^{2}\)-Wasserstein contractivity are also shown to admit lifts to \(\Upsilon\). Finally, by means of an approximation technique, convexity of the relative entropy (with respect to the volume measure on \(M\)), i.e., boundedness from below of the Ricci curvature of \(M\) in the sense of Lott-Sturm-Villani, and an evolution variational inequality à la \textit{S. Daneri} and \textit{G. Savaré} [SIAM J. Math. Anal. 40, No. 3, 1104--1122 (2008; Zbl 1166.58011)] are shown to admit analogues on \(\Upsilon\) whenever the Ricci curvature of \(M\) is bounded from below.