A land of monotone plenty, bis repetita: from classical to weak optimal transport

Mathematics > Optimization and Control [Submitted on 17 Jun 2026] Title:A land of monotone plenty, bis repetita: from classical to weak optimal transport View PDF HTML (experimental)Abstract:The celebrated c-cyclical monotonicity property is shown to boil down to the zeroth-order optimality condition for the optimal transport problem. More precisely, we show that optimality is equivalent to the non-negativity of the linear transport cost functional on the radial cone of admissible perturbations. We then utilise this point of view to extend the c-cyclical monotonicity property to the weak optimal transport problem, for which it corresponds to the first-order optimality condition, namely to the non-negativity of the linearisation of the weak transport cost functional near the optimiser. Altogether, this sheds new light on this monotonicity concept. For both classical and weak optimal transport, we show that this property characterises (under suitable assumptions) optimal transport plans. In the classical case, we recover known results of the literature but with revisited proofs. References & Citations Loading... Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Recommenders and Search Tools Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.