# Graph Generation with Spectral Geodesic Flow Matching

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.02520 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.02520/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 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 27 of its 35 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Oct 2025.

## 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, 27 of 27)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Flow Matching for Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02747/) (2022)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [Building Normalizing Flows with Stochastic Interpolants](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.15571/) (2022)
- [DiGress: Discrete Denoising diffusion for graph generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14734/) (2022)
- [GraphRNN: Generating Realistic Graphs with Deep Auto-regressive Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.08773/) (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)
- [Score-based Generative Modeling of Graphs via the System of Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.02514/) (2022)
- [Permutation Invariant Graph Generation via Score-Based Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.00638/) (2020)
- [Flow Matching on General Geometries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03660/) (2023)
- [Efficient Graph Generation with Graph Recurrent Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.00760/) (2019)
- [DIFUSCO: Graph-based Diffusion Solvers for Combinatorial Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08224/) (2023)
- [Riemannian Score-Based Generative Modelling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.02763/) (2022)
- [Fr'echet ChemNet Distance: A metric for generative models for molecules in drug discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.09518/) (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)
- [Riemannian Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.07949/) (2022)
- [Multi-Objective De Novo Drug Design with Conditional Graph Generative Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07299/) (2018)
- [SPECTRE: Spectral Conditioning Helps to Overcome the Expressivity Limits of One-shot Graph Generators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01613/) (2022)
- [Matching Normalizing Flows and Probability Paths on Manifolds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.04711/) (2022)
- [Graph Denoising Diffusion for Inverse Protein Folding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.16819/) (2023)
- [Fast Graph Generation via Spectral Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.08892/) (2022)
- [Generating Graphs via Spectral Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.18974/) (2024)
- [Stiefel Flow Matching for Moment-Constrained Structure Elucidation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.12540/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [TVGL-CFM:Generating and Forecasting Time-Varying Trajectories of Dynamic Networks with Conditional Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.16894/) (2026)
- [High-Resolution Dynamic Functional Connectivity Generation with Graph-Variate Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.37037/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Graph generation is a fundamental task with wide applications in modeling complex systems. Although existing methods align the spectrum or degree profile of the target graph, they often ignore the geometry induced by eigenvectors and the global structure of the graph. In this work, we propose Spectral Geodesic Flow Matching (SFMG), a novel framework that uses spectral eigenmaps to embed both input and target graphs into continuous Riemannian manifolds. We then define geodesic flows between embeddings and match distributions along these flows to generate output graphs. Our method yields several advantages: (i) captures geometric structure beyond eigenvalues, (ii) supports flexible generation of diverse graphs, and (iii) scales efficiently. Empirically, SFMG matches the performance of state-of-the-art approaches on graphlet, degree, and spectral metrics across diverse benchmarks. In particular, it achieves up to 30× speedup over diffusion-based models, offering a substantial advantage in scalability and training efficiency. We also demonstrate its ability to generalize to unseen graph scales. Overall, SFMG provides a new approach to graph synthesis by integrating spectral geometry with flow matching.