Papers

We develop a geometric and probabilistic theory of unimodular random infinite trivalent hyperbolic polyhedra in $\mathbb{H}^3$, allowing ordinary, ideal, and hyperideal vertices. Our results relate local dihedral geometry to global conformal type and random-walk behavior. A central role is played by a geometric characteristic $L_f(P)$, determined by the dihedral angles incident to a face $f$. We establish the unimodular Gauss-Bonnet identity $$ \mathbb E[L_f(P)]=2\pi-\frac{\pi}{3}\mathbb E[deg(f)]. $$ Together with circle-pattern uniformization, this yields a sharp parabolic-hyperbolic dichotomy governed by the expected geometric characteristic. We also introduce polyhedral soficity and prove that admissible Benjamini-Schramm limits of finite trivalent hyperbolic polyhedra are parabolic. We further establish a quantitative Ring Lemma for regular circle patterns, providing degree-sensitive geometric control without assuming bounded degrees. Combined with unimodular probability methods, this estimate enables us to identify the Poisson boundary of the face random walk and establish positive linear hyperbolic speed. Our results extend the geometric-characteristic theory beyond ideal polyhedra, connecting three-dimensional geometry, unimodular Gauss-Bonnet theory, and stochastic boundary behavior.

This paper investigates the domain $\mathbf{\Theta}_n$ from an operator-theoretic perspective. We establish several characterizations of $\mathbf{\Theta}_n$-contractions, $\mathbf{\Theta}_n$-unitaries, and $\mathbf{\Theta}_n$-isometries, and explore their connections with $\Gamma_n$- and tetrablock operator tuples, as well as with the corresponding operator classes associated with $\mathbf{\Theta}_{n+1}$. We prove that every $\mathbf{\Theta}_n$-contraction admits a canonical decomposition as the direct sum of a $\mathbf{\Theta}_n$-unitary and a completely non-unitary $\mathbf{\Theta}_n$-contraction. We further develop the conditional dilation theory for $\mathbf{\Theta}_n$-contractions and establish necessary conditions for the existence of $\mathbf{\Theta}_n$-isometric dilations. We show that the conditions in Theorem~\ref{Conditional Dilation} are not, in general, sufficient by constructing a $\mathbf{\Theta}_3$-contraction that admits a $\mathbf{\Theta}_3$-isometric dilation although condition~(2) of Theorem~\ref{Conditional Dilation} fails. We further study pure $\mathbf{\Theta}_n$-isometric dilations of $\mathbf{\Theta}_n$-contractions and establish a Hardy space characterization of such dilations. We show that the resulting $\mathbf{\Theta}_n$-isometric dilation is minimal. We also study isometric dilations of doubly commuting $\mathbf{\Theta}_n$-contractions under suitable Hardy space compatibility conditions. Finally, we identify a special class of $\mathbf{\Theta}_2$-contractions that admits a $\mathbf{\Theta}_2$-isometric dilation.

We prove that every complex projective variety is birational to a smooth projective manifold admitting a constant scalar curvature Kähler (cscK) metric. For any smooth projective variety, a birational cscK model is obtained by resolving the codimension two base locus of a general Lefschetz pencil in a sufficiently positive linear system. The cscK polarization is given explicitly, producing a cscK model also when the initial variety is unstable. In dimension two this proves the folklore conjecture that the blowup of any complex projective surface in enough points admits cscK metrics.

Let $E$ be a CM number field, $F$ a totally real subfield (e.g. $\mathbb Q$), and let $\mathfrak a$ be a non-zero fractional ideal of $E$. Endowed with the Hermitian trace form $h_{E/F}(x,y)=\mathrm{Tr}_{E/F}(x\overline{y})$, the ideal $\mathfrak a$ defines an ideal lattice over $\mathcal O_F$. In this paper, we give explicit formulas for the Jordan decomposition of this lattice at a prime ideal $\mathfrak p\subset\mathcal O_F$, in terms of the prime ideal factorization of $\mathfrak a$ in $E$. Following the approach of Erez, Morales, and Perlis, we reduce the computation to the local behavior at the primes above $\mathfrak p$. Our results provide local invariants for the isometry relation between ideal lattices, with potential applications to the study of structured lattices arising in arithmetic and cryptography.

A group $\Gamma$ generated by a finite set $S$ has Property $(T)$ if the associated Kazhdan constant $\kappa(\Gamma,S)$ is positive. If so, the same holds for every finite generating set $S$. There are Property $(T)$ groups which are uniformly $(T)$, and others which are not. It is a well-known problem whether the classical examples of Property $(T)$ groups, $\mathrm{SL}_n(\mathbb{Z})$, $n\geq 3$, are uniformly $(T)$ or not. We show that they are not. Moreover, the same holds for every infinite finitely generated linear group.

In this work, we propose an adaptive stepsize rule with guaranteed convergence for Distributed Gradient Tracking applied to scalar quadratic problems with heterogeneous curvatures. Most distributed gradient-based algorithms require a suitable stepsize selection. Available theoretical bounds are often overly conservative, while practical implementations typically rely on empirically tuned heuristics. Online adaptive strategies have only recently emerged for general distributed convex optimization, but their properties and performance remain only partially understood. To gain analytical insight, we focus on the informative setting of scalar quadratic costs, which allows us to explicitly capture the interplay between network topology and curvature heterogeneity. We derive a convergence bound parameterized only by the essential spectral radius of the consensus matrix and the heterogeneity of the local cost curvatures, both computable online without any prior knowledge of the optimization problem. Optimizing this bound yields a computationally tractable surrogate for the convergence rate and the optimal constant stepsize. The resulting stepsize admits an analytical interpretation, guarantees convergence for arbitrary network topologies and curvature heterogeneity, and is provably tight for complete graphs and homogeneous curvatures. Finally, extensive numerical simulations demonstrate that the proposed distributed adaptive strategy significantly outperforms existing offline and online stepsize selection rules in the considered setting.

In this paper, we address the problem of achieving fast convergence in gradient descent for quadratic functions without relying on a priori knowledge of global function parameters. Inspired by adaptive stepsize algorithms for smooth convex functions, we propose a computationally lightweight strategy based on running estimates of minimal and maximal local curvatures. We prove that our proposed algorithm converges to the optimal constant stepsize which achieves the fastest convergence. Simulations show that the convergence rate achieved by our proposed algorithm is comparable or superior to recent adaptive approaches both in the quadratic case under consideration and in a preliminary test on logistic classification.

Several statistical methods of phylogenetic network inference and testing for non-tree-like relationships are based on assessing genomic data through quartet Concordance Factors, the frequencies of 4-taxon topological relationships on gene trees. While such an approach obviates making several undesirable modeling assumptions, it also results in non-identifiability issues for network roots and for small cycles. In this work, an algorithm and accompanying Macaulay2 implementation are provided for computing $n$-tet Concordance Factors on any phylogenetic network. We employ this algorithm on quintet Concordance Factors, summarizing 5-taxon gene trees, to explore identifiability of level-1 networks under the Network Multispecies Coalescent model. We show some additional network features become identifiable that are not through quartets. As identifiability is a necessary prerequisite to inference by any method, this lays a foundation for future inference work.

The quartet distance counts the four-leaf subsets on which two binary phylogenetic trees display different topologies. We prove that its maximum over trees on $n$ leaves is $(2/3+o(1))\binom{n}{4}$, resolving a conjecture of Bandelt and Dress from 1986 and calibrating the scale of a fundamental metric for comparing phylogenetic trees. The proof reduces arbitrary pairs of trees to caterpillars by means of a common-root planarization and an identity on five-leaf trees.

We study bounded finite-interaction-range operators $H$ on $\ell^2(\Gamma)$, where $\Gamma$ is a uniformly discrete subset of a left-invariant doubling metric measure space $(X,d,\mu)$. Our goal is to approximate spectral information of $H$ from finite sections $H_{L,x}$ supported on balls $B_L(x)\cap\Gamma$. The main technical input is a commutator estimate for Lipschitz ”tent” localisations $W_{L,x}$, which depends only on geometric properties (doubling) and a uniform interaction degree. As a consequence, we obtain explicit two-sided pseudospectral inclusion bounds of the form \[ \gamma_{L,\varepsilon}(H)\subset \sigma_\varepsilon(H)\subset \gamma_{L,\varepsilon+C_0/L}(H), \] and Hausdorff convergence of window pseudospectra to the (global) pseudospectrum as $L\to\infty$. In the self-adjoint/ normal case this yields computable gap tests and spectral sampling schemes with rigorous $O(1/L)$ error control, while in the non-normal case it leads to corresponding approximation results for pseudospectra. The framework isolates the geometric core behind earlier approaches on $\mathbb{R}^n$ and on countable Abelian groups, and covers irregular geometries arising in quasicrystal models, as well as new cases such as discrete (non-Abelian) nilpotent groups (including for example the discrete Heisenberg group).

A proper coloring of a graph is called a strong odd coloring if, for every vertex \(v\) and every color appearing in the open neighborhood of \(v\), that color appears an odd number of times in \(N(v)\). The corresponding minimum number of colors is the strong odd chromatic number, denoted by \(\chi_{\mathrm{so}}(G)\). Caro et al.~\cite{CaroPetrusevskiSkrekovskiTuzaStrongOdd} proved that every planar graph has strong odd chromatic number at most \(388\). Manattu et al.~\cite{ManattuVinayLakshmanan2026} later constructed planar graphs with strong odd chromatic number \(17\) and asked whether larger values are possible and whether the upper bound \(388\) can be improved. We address these questions as follows. First, we improve the general upper bound by proving that every planar graph \(G\) satisfies \(\chi_{\mathrm{so}}(G)\le 368\). This follows by improving the auxiliary proper facially odd coloring bound for loopless \(2\)-connected plane multigraphs from \(97\) colors to \(92\) colors and combining this with the reduction of Caro et al. and the Four Color Theorem. Second, we give a different explicit planar construction with \(\chi_{\mathrm{so}}(G)=20\), together with a self-contained proof of the exact value. We emphasize that Goetze et al.~\cite{GoetzeKluteKnauerParadaPenaUeckerdt2025} had already posted an arXiv preprint in May 2025 containing a planar example with strong odd chromatic number \(20\). Thus our construction is not a priority claim for the value \(20\), but rather an independent and fully verified construction whose value exceeds \(17\), the value that motivated Problem~1 of Manattu et al.

We construct two families of curvature inhomogeneous Riemannian manifolds with constant Ricci eigenvalues. The first, derived from the Einstein warped products, has two distinct Ricci eigenvalues and admits a local isometric immersion of minimum codimension two. The second, arising from the Riemannian Schwarzschild–Tangherlini manifold, has $k+1$ distinct Ricci eigenvalues and admits an isometric embedding of codimension $k+2$, which is the smallest within the adapted product class.

We study self-avoiding walks on the canonical one-sided graphs of Lindstrom nested fractals. We prove that the connective constant $\mu$ exists and identify $\log\mu$ with the critical inverse temperature of a finite-dimensional boundary-state renormalization. If the boundary-state partition vectors are bounded at criticality, then the fixed-length counts $c_n$ satisfy two-sided polynomial bounds around $\mu^n$. We also prove that $h$-flexibility implies $c_{n+h}/c_n\to\mu^h$. For regular polygonal $N$-gaskets, we derive exact crossing recursions, determine the smallest flexibility step $h$, and obtain explicit algebraic connective constants for the $6$- and $9$-gaskets. The Vicsek graph has no flexibility step, and its successive ratios do not converge.

Let $(L,e^{-\phi})$ be a positive Hermitian holomorphic line bundle over a compact Riemann surface $X$, and let $\omega=i\partial\overline{\partial}\phi$. We obtain explicit pointwise estimates for the Bergman form of the tensor power $mL$. If $\mathrm{Ric}\,\omega\leq\omega$ and the shortest nonconstant closed geodesic has length at least $2\pi$, then \[ K_{m\phi}\geq \frac{2m-1}{4\pi}\,\omega, \] with sharpness holding for $(\mathbb P^1,\mathcal O_{\mathbb P^1}(2))$. We also obtain a local version, depending on an upper curvature bound and the injectivity radius, which recovers the first two terms of the Bergman expansion when the curvature is constant. We also find a higher dimensional version. Under the two-sided bound $-\omega\leq\mathrm{Ric}\,\omega\leq\omega$ and the same closed-geodesic hypothesis, we also prove \[ K_{m\phi}\leq \frac{m\omega}{2\pi} \left(1+\frac{3}{2m}\right). \] The lower estimates use the deformation to the tangent space version of the Ohsawa–Takegoshi theorem established by He, Wang, and the author, whereas the upper bound via Błocki–Zwonek and isoperimetric inequalities.

We construct, for any exponent $p\in(1,\infty)$, $p$-homogeneous rank-one convex integrands $F\colon \mathbb{R}^{2\times m}\to \mathbb{R}$ that are nowhere quasiconvex when $m$ is large. When $p$ is sufficiently close to $4$, such examples can be constructed on $\mathbb{R}^{2\times 3}$: for $p=4$, our example is an explicit quartic polynomial. Related constructions give, for every $p$, conjugation- and transposition-invariant examples on $\mathbb{R}^{d\times d}$, and examples on $\mathbb{R}^{4\times 2}$ for every $p\neq 2$.

This paper investigates the performance of faster-than-Nyquist (FTN) signaling within the context of hyper-reliable low-latency communications (HRLLC), specifically focusing on the challenges imposed by the short-packet regime. While traditional Nyquist-based systems maintain symbol orthogonality to prevent inter-symbol interference (ISI), FTN intentionally introduces ISI to achieve higher transmission rates. While many existing FTN studies assume perfect channel state information, this assumption is often impractical for mission-critical HRLLC. In such scenarios, a portion of the limited packet length must be reserved for pilot symbols to ensure reliable estimation. To characterize the achievable error probability while accounting for imperfect channel estimation in the short-blocklength regime, we derive the random coding union bound with parameter $s$ (RCUs) under mismatched decoding for FTN systems. The numerical results demonstrate that FTN provides up to a 2 \dB SNR gain over Nyquist signaling, provided that power allocation and pilot overhead are optimized. These findings highlight the necessity of non-asymptotic analysis for designing efficient, next-generation HRLLC-FTN systems.

We revisit the “collapse to the mean” phenomenon, which refers to mild structural conditions, such as local linearity, that force a law-invariant functional $\ph$ defined on finite-mean random variables to depend solely on the expectation of its argument $X$, and not on any other distributional feature. Starting from a concise characterisation of the convex order, our simplified approach unifies and extends existing results without assuming the functional to be convex or monotone in the almost-sure order, and clarifies the conceptual foundations of the “collapse to the mean" phenomenon. In addition, we establish a new “dual collapse” result for quasi-star-shaped functionals.

The paper proposes a novel proximal difference-of-convex (DC) algorithmic framework to solve general non-convex, non-smooth optimization problems. By combining Barzilai-Borwein (BB) step sizes with nonmonotone line search strategies, our approach effectively overcomes the conservative step sizes and stability issues inherent in standard proximal DC algorithms. Furthermore, we develop extrapolation mechanisms to accelerate convergence while ensuring global stability. The global convergence of the proposed algorithms is rigorously established under the Kurdyka-Łojasiewicz property. Numerical experiments on the SCAD-regularized least squares problem and graphic Ginzburg-Landau image segmentation models demonstrate that the proposed methods achieve highly competitive efficiency and accuracy compared to existing DC algorithms.

We present several observations on the antimaximum principle (AMP) for the model problem $-\Delta_p u = \lambda |u|^{p-2} u + f$ in a bounded smooth domain $\Omega$, subject to the zero Dirichlet boundary conditions, and where the source function $f$ is nontrivial, nonnegative, and sufficiently regular. Denote by $\lambda_f$ the endpoint of validity of the AMP, so that every solution of the problem is negative in $\Omega$ for any $\lambda \in (\lambda_1,\lambda_f)$. Our discussion covers the following aspects: identification of a class of sources over which the AMP is uniform, lower semicontinuity of the map $f \mapsto \lambda_f$, bounds on $\lambda_f$, the nonexistence of negative solutions for sufficiently large $\lambda$ (extended AMP), the anticomparison principle, and the weakening of the source regularity from the Lebesgue to Morrey spaces. Some of the results are stated only in the linear case $p=2$. As a part of the discussion, we provide a few related open problems.

We study whether varying the topological boundary of the doubled Virasoro TQFT can produce distinct torus pairings for an ensemble interpretation of 3D gravity. In the ordinary nondegenerate sector, every bounded pairing that commutes with the modular transformations is scalar, and vacuum normalization selects the diagonal pairing. The proof identifies the modular transformations with the even Weil representation and applies the Cowling–Steger lattice-restriction theorem. Under the ordinary block-diagonal vacuum–continuum ansatz, positivity and the two vacuum marginals also make a Borel-measure pairing bounded, without assuming absolute continuity; modular invariance then forces the same diagonal pairing. These two classes therefore contain no distinct torus pairings to average. A nontrivial Virasoro boundary ensemble must involve genus-one data outside these classes, additional sectors or vacuum–continuum couplings, or information invisible in the torus pairing. Elementary proofs in explicit regular sectors explain the rigidity mechanisms, and numerical calculations provide independent checks.

We introduce an extension of the Fibonacci number system, we call the fractional Fibonacci number system, which interpolates between the Fibonacci number system (used for natural numbers) and the irrational base-$\phi$ number system, which can be used to represent real numbers. The number system finds its use in interpreting the localization phase diagram of the many-body non-interacting Aubry-André model. For finite system sizes a localization criterion can be obtained if the particle density is written in the fractional Fibonacci number system. In the thermodynamic limit, the criterion remains, but in this case the particle density is expressed in base-$\phi$. The nature of the thermodynamic limit is also discussed.

We prove positive-time regularity for harmonic map heat flows from finite-dimensional $\mathrm{RCD}(K,N)$ spaces into complete $\mathrm{CAT}(0)$ spaces, without assuming that either the source or the target is smooth. For bounded-image initial data, the $\mathrm{EVI}$ gradient flow of the Dirichlet energy admits a representative that is locally Lipschitz jointly in space and time. Moreover, its spatial pointwise Lipschitz constant satisfies an Eells–Sampson-type parabolic Bochner inequality. The main difficulty is that the smooth parabolic perturbations used to select contact points are unavailable on an $\mathrm{RCD}$ source. We overcome it by a sliced contact-selection principle that converts the elliptic ABP estimate on $\mathrm{RCD}$ spaces into the space–time contact selection required by the Hamilton–Jacobi argument.

In recent work, Marcussen, Rubinfeld, and Sudan introduced the notion of quality control problems, which aim to capture the task of determining if a given input is truly random. Formally, their goal is to accept typical inputs from the specified distribution while rejecting every input whose value of a specified statistic is far from the distributional baseline. This captures the empirical practice of using specified statistics as a proxy for the quality of randomness. Empirical algorithms, however, have not exploited the asymmetry in the definition of quality control problems, which require soundness guarantees in the worst-case while only seeking average-case completeness. Their work abstracted a problem definition emphasizing this asymmetry and used it to give efficient quality control algorithms for assessing the randomness of graphs. In this work, we introduce and study quality control problems over sequences, where the goal is to distinguish a sequence of i.i.d. characters from sequences where some specified pattern appears too often (or too infrequently) as a subsequence. We consider this problem in both the finite-alphabet setting and for real-valued sequences. We refer to the former setting as the pattern counting problem. In the latter case, the natural notion of a pattern is to consider the relative ordering of the characters in the subsequence, and we refer to this as the permutation pattern counting problem. Algorithms to approximately count (permutation) patterns of length $k$ in a worst-case sequence of length $n$ can provably require exponential in $k$ queries into the sequence. In contrast, we show that by taking advantage of the asymmetry in the definition of quality control, we give algorithms that run in poly$(k)$ time to solve these problems. We also prove that any quality control algorithm (over some natural distributions) requires superlinear queries in $k$.

The Sylvester sequence is defined recursively by $s_1=2$ and $s_i=s_{1}\cdots s_{i-1}+1$. In this paper, we prove that the Fano index of an $n$-dimensional well-formed weighted projective space with canonical singularities is bounded above by \[ (s_n-1)(2s_n-3). \] This gives an affirmative answer to a conjecture of Chengxi Wang for weighted projective spaces and $\mathbb Q$-factorial toric Fano varieties with Picard number one. We also investigate the distribution of Fano indices among $4$-dimensional weighted projective spaces. As the distribution of Fano indices of weighted projective spaces coincides with that of indices of terminal Calabi–Yau varieties in dimension $n\leq 3$, we expect this coincidence to persist also in dimension 4, and more generally, in all dimensions.

We establish first and second variation formulas for general mean curvature functionals under arbitrary variations in arbitrary Riemannian manifolds. We obtain corresponding formulas in the sub-Riemannian Heisenberg group through a Riemannian approximation scheme.

In this paper, we first introduce the notions of Hom-anti-Zinbiel superalgebras, extending the corresponding anti-algebraic structures to the Hom-super setting. We develop their fundamental properties and characterize them in terms of anti-super-$\mathcal O$-operators and anti-Rota-Baxter operators. Furthermore, we introduce the concepts of super-commutative Connes cocycles on super-commutative Hom-associative superalgebras and super-commutative $2$-cocycles on Hom-Lie superalgebras. We prove that nondegenerate super-commutative Connes cocycles give rise to compatible Hom-anti-Zinbiel superalgebra structures, while nondegenerate super-commutative $2$-cocycles induce compatible Hom-anti-pre-Lie superalgebra structures. As a main application, we show that a Hom-Poisson superalgebra equipped with a nondegenerate super-commutative Connes cocycle on its Hom-associative component and a nondegenerate super-commutative $2$-cocycle on its Hom-Lie component canonically determines a compatible Hom-anti-pre-Poisson superalgebra, and conversely. This provides a unified framework linking Hom-Poisson and Hom-anti-pre-Poisson superalgebras and reveals the fundamental role played by nondegenerate supersymmetric bilinear forms in the structure theory of Hom-type superalgebras. Several further structural results and characterizations are also obtained.

Let $X$ and $Y$ be locally compact Hausdorff spaces and let $\mathbb{K}\in \{\mathbb{R},\mathbb{C}\}$. We say that a bijection $T\colon C_0(X,\mathbb{K})\to C_0(Y,\mathbb{K})$ is a ring isomorphism in norm if \[ \|T(f+g)\|=\|T(f)+T(g)\|,\qquad \|T(fg)\|=\|T(f)T(g)\| \] for every $f,g\in C_0(X,\mathbb{K})$. We determine the form of such maps. When $\mathbb{K}=\mathbb{C}$, under the additional assumption that $\|T(\overline f)\|=\|T(f)\|$ for every $f\in C_0(X,\mathbb{C})$, there exist a continuous function $w\colon Y\to\{\lambda\in\mathbb{C}:|\lambda|=1\}$, a homeomorphism $\varphi\colon Y\to X$, and a closed and open subset $Y_0\subset Y$ such that \[ T(f)(y)= \begin{cases} w(y)f(\varphi(y)),& y\in Y_0,\\ w(y)\overline{f(\varphi(y))},& y\in Y\setminus Y_0, \end{cases} \] for every $f\in C_0(X,\mathbb{C})$ and $y\in Y$. When $\mathbb{K}=\mathbb{R}$, there exist a continuous function $w\colon Y\to\{\pm1\}$ and a homeomorphism $\varphi\colon Y\to X$ such that \[ T(f)(y)=w(y)f(\varphi(y)) \] for every $f\in C_0(X,\mathbb{R})$ and $y\in Y$. In particular, the real case extends the norm version of the Gelfand–Kolmogoroff theorem to the locally compact setting.

This article addresses adaptivity in the kernel multiscale method. Adaptively compressed kernel multiscale approximations have already been presented and analyzed in (LeGia & Wendland, 2014). The main contribution of this work is to attempt to avoid using function evaluations which will be deleted in the compression step anyways. In order to work with function values, we always work in the Lagrange representation. We still assume to have all function values available to compute error norms, but we do not include those values in our approximations. Finally, we also employ local Lagrange function to further reduce the numerical work.

We introduce a McKean–Vlasov semigroup in the presence of common noise and study its first-order differential structure. Given a terminal functional $G$, the semigroup is defined by propagating the initial law through a reference conditional McKean–Vlasov flow. Using a finite-particle approximation and a diagonal/off-diagonal decomposition of the tangent processes, we identify the Lions derivative of the propagated functional and derive a backward representation along arbitrary admissible conditional law flows. This formula involves only first-order derivatives in the measure variable and yields both a Feynman–Kac representation for linear equations on the Wasserstein space and, in the driftless case, a martingale representation problem whose unique solution is given by the McKean–Vlasov heat semigroup and its Lions derivative. We also discuss mixed finite-dimensional/Wasserstein representations and discrete path-dependent extensions.

We introduce a weighted version of intermediate Ricci curvature and establish several equivalent characterizations of its lower bound. As an application, we generalize the results of Aishwarya–Rotem–Shenfeld [arXiv:2509.23399v1] by deriving intrinsic-dimensional evolution variational inequalities and the corresponding Wasserstein contraction estimates for the heat flow. We also compare our characterization with that of Ketterer–Mondino [arXiv:1610.03339v3] via lower-dimensional optimal transport.