Operator capacity, the Brascamp--Lieb inequality and geometric programming

The capacity of completely positive operators and the Brascamp--Lieb constant can both be interpreted in terms of unconstrained geometric programming up to an additional minimisation over a compact group. We shine light on this perspective and make use of it to make novel contributions in both directions. For example, by making use of recent work of Bennett--Bez--Buschenhenke--Cowling--Flock, we prove new results regarding near-minimisers and local Hölder regularity of operator capacity. In addition, we observe that these results may be extended to the more general notion of capacity of quiver data. Furthermore, the geometric programming viewpoint allows us to give a new proof of the finiteness characterisation of the Brascamp--Lieb constant due to Bennett--Carbery--Christ--Tao (assuming Lieb's theorem on gaussian saturation).