Stability of Schrödinger potentials and convergence of Sinkhorn’s algorithm

Abstract

We study the stability of entropically regularized optimal transport with respect to the marginals. Given marginals converging weakly, we establish a strong convergence for the Schrödinger potentials, describing the density of the optimal couplings. When the marginals converge in total variation, the optimal couplings also converge in total variation. This is applied to show that Sinkhorn’s algorithm converges in total variation when costs are quadratic and marginals are subgaussian or, more generally, for all continuous costs satisfying an integrability condition.