A Geometric Theory of Cosmological Structure via Entropic Curvature in Wasserstein Space

TL;DR

This paper develops a geometric framework for analyzing cosmological large-scale structures using optimal transport and Wasserstein geometry, introducing effective Ricci curvatures linked to entropy and scale-dependent curvature indicators.

Contribution

It introduces a novel geometric approach based on entropic curvature in Wasserstein space, connecting optimal transport theory with cosmological structure analysis and scale-dependent curvature measures.

Findings

Effective Ricci curvatures are formulated for cosmological data analysis.

Conventional Hessian-based structures are recovered as a special case.

Curvature statistics relate to higher-order integrals of the power spectrum.

Abstract

We construct a geometric framework for cosmological large-scale structure based on optimal transport theory and Wasserstein geometry. In this framework, Ricci curvature on the probability measure space $\mathcal{P}_2(M)$ is characterized by the geodesic convexity of entropy and is formulated as the response of probability distributions to optimal transport. We introduce effective Ricci curvatures $K_{\mathrm{eff}}^{(\infty)}$ and $K_{\mathrm{eff}}^{(N)}$ associated with Kullback--Leibler-type and R\'{e}nyi-type entropies, corresponding respectively to the curvature-dimension conditions CD$(K,\infty)$ and CD$(K,N)$. By localizing these curvatures to finite scales using local and reference measures, we construct curvature indicators applicable to observational data. Under a local quadratic approximation, the effective curvature reduces to the Hessian of the log-density, showing that conventional Hessian-based structure classifications arise as a limiting case of the present framework. We further show that effective curvature depends on observational scale and formulate this dependence as a scale flow, distinct from Ricci flow because it describes a change of resolution rather than a time evolution of geometry. Treating curvature as a random field then extends the statistical description of density fields: curvature statistics are given by higher-order weighted integrals of the power spectrum and by spatial derivatives of the correlation function, emphasizing geometric rather than amplitude information. This framework provides a unified connection between optimal transport geometry and cosmological structure analysis, and offers a new perspective on multiscale structure and nonlinear statistics.