An optimal transport formulation of the Einstein equations of general relativity (Q6160161)

The authors provide an equivalent formulation of the Einstein equations on a smooth spacetime in terms of optimal mass transportation. Given a cosmological constant \(\Lambda\) and an energy-momentum tensor \(T\), the Einstein equations can be written as Ric\(=\tilde T\) for a suitable quadratic form \(\tilde T\) depending on \(\Lambda\) and \(T\). To obtain the full characterisation, the authors prove separately optimal transport characterisations of the corresponding upper and lower bounds of the Ricci tensor by an arbitrary quadratic form. Roughly speaking, the inequality Ric\(\ge \tilde T\) is equivalent with a distorted concavity of the Boltzmann-Shannon entropy along \textit{all} (Lorenzian) optimal dynamical plans, while the inequality Ric\(\le \tilde T\) is characterised by convexity of the entropy along suitably chosen optimal dynamical plans. The distortion of the convexity and concavity is given in terms of the quadratic form \(\tilde T\). Such a characterisation for Ricci curvature lower bounds is an analogue of a well-established optimal transport formulation of (constant) Ricci lower bounds on Riemannian manifolds, while the characterisation for the upper bound is inspired in particular by a work of \textit{K.-T. Sturm} [Tôhoku Math. J. (2) 73, No. 4, 539--564 (2021; Zbl 1486.53055)]. In the appendix, a synthetic notion of the Einstein vacuum equations is proposed, and the stability under a Lorentzian variant of measured Gromov-Hausdorff convergence is studied.