On the duality between $p$-modulus and probability measures

Abstract

Motivated by recent developments on calculus in metric measure spaces $(X,\mathrm{d},\mathrm{m})$, we prove a general duality principle between Fuglede's notion [15] of $p$-modulus for families of finite Borel measures in $(X,\mathrm{d})$ and probability measures with barycenter in $L^q(X,\mathrm{m})$, with $q$ dual exponent of $p\in (1,\infty )$. We apply this general duality principle to study null sets for families of parametric and non-parametric curves in $X$. In the final part of the paper we provide a new proof, independent of optimal transportation, of the equivalence of notions of weak upper gradient based on $p$-podulus [21, 23] and suitable probability measures in the space of curves ([6, 7]).