The isometry group of Wasserstein spaces: The Hilbertian case

Motivated by Kloeckner’s result on the isometry group of the quadratic Wasserstein space W2(Rn), we describe the isometry group Isom(Wp(E)) for all parameters 0 < p < ∞ and for all separable real Hilbert spaces E. In particular, we show that Wp(X) is isometrically rigid for all Polish space X whenever 0 < p < 1. This is a consequence of our more general result: we prove that W1(X) is isometrically rigid if X is a complete separable metric space that satisfies the strict triangle inequality. Furthermore, we show that this latter rigidity result does not generalise to parameters p > 1, by solving Kloeckner’s problem affirmatively on the existence of mass-splitting isometries.