# Hyperbolic Graph Diffusion Model

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.07618 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.07618/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Flow matching, time series and science, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 35 of its 53 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Jun 2023.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Flow matching, time series and science](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/flow-matching-time-series-and-science/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05600/) (2019)
- [Graph Neural Networks for Social Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.07243/) (2019)
- [Equivariant Diffusion for Molecule Generation in 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.17003/) (2022)
- [GeoDiff: a Geometric Diffusion Model for Molecular Conformation Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02923/) (2022)
- [GraphRNN: Generating Realistic Graphs with Deep Auto-regressive Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.08773/) (2018)
- [MolGAN: An implicit generative model for small molecular graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.11973/) (2018)
- [GraphVAE: Towards Generation of Small Graphs Using Variational Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03480/) (2018)
- [GraphAF: a Flow-based Autoregressive Model for Molecular Graph Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.09382/) (2020)
- [Permutation Invariant Graph Generation via Score-Based Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.00638/) (2020)
- [Learning Continuous Hierarchies in the Lorentz Model of Hyperbolic Geometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.03417/) (2018)
- [Torsional Diffusion for Molecular Conformer Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.01729/) (2022)
- [Hyperbolic Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.12892/) (2019)
- [Learning Deep Generative Models of Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.03324/) (2018)
- [Fr'echet ChemNet Distance: A metric for generative models for molecules in drug discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.09518/) (2018)
- [Riemannian Adaptive Optimization Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.00760/) (2018)
- [MoFlow: An Invertible Flow Model for Generating Molecular Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10137/) (2020)
- [GraphDF: A Discrete Flow Model for Molecular Graph Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.01189/) (2021)
- [Geoopt: Riemannian Optimization in PyTorch](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.02819/) (2020)
- [Continuous Hierarchical Representations with Poincar'e Variational Auto-Encoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.06033/) (2019)
- [Fully Hyperbolic Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.14686/) (2021)
- [Graph Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.13177/) (2019)
- [GraphEBM: Molecular Graph Generation with Energy-Based Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.00546/) (2021)
- [Graph Representation Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.00958/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [GGBall: Graph Generative Model on Poincar'e Ball](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07198/) (2025)
- [Diffusion-based Graph Generative Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15617/) (2024)
- [Hyperbolic Graph Neural Networks Under the Microscope: The Role of Geometry-Task Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.01828/) (2026)
- [Bias mitigation in graph diffusion models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.01709/) (2026)
- [Is Noise Conditioning Necessary? A Unified Theory of Unconditional Graph Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22935/) (2025)
- [GraphK: Variable-Size Graph Generation with Efficient Edge Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.18777/) (2026)
- [Temporal Geometry of Deep Networks: Hyperbolic Representations of Training Dynamics for Intrinsic Explainability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.03000/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Diffusion generative models (DMs) have achieved promising results in image and graph generation. However, real-world graphs, such as social networks, molecular graphs, and traffic graphs, generally share non-Euclidean topologies and hidden hierarchies. For example, the degree distributions of graphs are mostly power-law distributions. The current latent diffusion model embeds the hierarchical data in a Euclidean space, which leads to distortions and interferes with modeling the distribution. Instead, hyperbolic space has been found to be more suitable for capturing complex hierarchical structures due to its exponential growth property. In order to simultaneously utilize the data generation capabilities of diffusion models and the ability of hyperbolic embeddings to extract latent hierarchical distributions, we propose a novel graph generation method called, Hyperbolic Graph Diffusion Model (HGDM), which consists of an auto-encoder to encode nodes into successive hyperbolic embeddings, and a DM that operates in the hyperbolic latent space. HGDM captures the crucial graph structure distributions by constructing a hyperbolic potential node space that incorporates edge information. Extensive experiments show that HGDM achieves better performance in generic graph and molecule generation benchmarks, with a 48% improvement in the quality of graph generation with highly hierarchical structures.