Geodesic convexity of the relative entropy in reversible Markov chains

Abstract

We consider finite-dimensional, time-continuous Markov chains satisfying the detailed balance condition as gradient systems with the relative entropy E as driving functional. The Riemannian metric is defined via its inverse matrix called the Onsager matrix K. We provide methods for establishing geodesic λ-convexity of the entropy and treat several examples including some discretizations of one-dimensional Fokker–Planck equations.