Curvature of the Manifold of Fixed-Rank Positive-Semidefinite Matrices Endowed with the Bures–Wasserstein Metric

Abstract

We consider the manifold of rank-p positive-semidefinite matrices of size n, seen as a quotient of the set of full-rank n-by-p matrices by the orthogonal group in dimension p. The resulting distance coincides with the Wasserstein distance between centered degenerate Gaussian distributions. We obtain expressions for the Riemannian curvature tensor and the sectional curvature of the manifold. We also provide tangent vectors spanning planes associated with the extreme values of the sectional curvature.