Metric Geometry of Lebesgue, Wasserstein, and Gromov-Wasserstein Spaces: Submetries, Curvature, and Geodesics

Abstract

A metric space $Z$ gives rise to three natural classes of infinite-dimensional metric spaces associated to $Z$: $p$-Wasserstein spaces of probability measures on $Z$, nonlinear Lebesgue $L^p$-spaces of $Z$-valued maps, and $p$-Gromov-Wasserstein spaces of $Z$-valued kernels. The latter class, referred to as $Z$-Gromov-Wasserstein ($Z$-GW) spaces, extends the classical Gromov-Wasserstein framework from metric measure spaces to more general, possibly attributed, network-like structures, and unifies many GW-type distances that nowadays play a significant role in metric geometry, data science and machine learning. In this article we develop a unified metric-geometric theory of these three classes of spaces, with a particular focus on the $Z$-GW spaces. Our first main result identifies a fundamental submetry structure linking them: the nonlinear Lebesgue space maps via a submetry onto the $Z$-GW space, which in turn maps via a submetry onto the Wasserstein space. This structure provides a mechanism for transferring geometric information among the three spaces. We apply this framework to geodesics and Alexandrov curvature. For $1<p<\infty$, we prove that geodesicity of $Z$ is equivalent to geodesicity of each of the three associated spaces; in the endpoint case $p=1$, all three associated spaces are geodesic, even when $Z$ is not. We also characterize geodesics in the $Z$-GW space as generalized interpolations, extending a known characterization in the classical setting due to Sturm. Finally, we give a complete classification of Alexandrov curvature bounds for these spaces in terms of the curvature of $Z$. Thus, while the main focus of the paper is a new metric-geometric theory of $Z$-GW spaces, the submetry framework also extends classical theorems for Wasserstein and Gromov-Wasserstein spaces and yields new geometric consequences for nonlinear Lebesgue spaces.