The Dirichlet–Ferguson diffusion on the space of probability measures over a closed Riemannian manifold

We construct a recurrent diffusion process with values in the space of probability measures over an arbitrary closed Riemannian manifold of dimension d≥2. The process is associated with the Dirichlet form defined by integration of the Wasserstein gradient w.r.t. the Dirichlet–Ferguson measure, and is the counterpart on multidimensional base spaces to the modified massive Arratia flow over the unit interval described in V. Konarovskyi and M.-K. von Renesse (Comm. Pure Appl. Math. 72 (2019) 764–800). Together with two different constructions of the process, we discuss its ergodicity, invariant sets, finite-dimensional approximations, and Varadhan short-time asymptotics.