# Learning Paths for Dynamic Measure Transport: A Control Perspective

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.03797 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.03797/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 28 of its 37 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Nov 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Flow Matching for Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02747/) (2022)
- [Neural Ordinary Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.07366/) (2018)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [Normalizing Flows for Probabilistic Modeling and Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.02762/) (2019)
- [Building Normalizing Flows with Stochastic Interpolants](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.15571/) (2022)
- [Stochastic Interpolants: A Unifying Framework for Flows and Diffusions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08797/) (2023)
- [FFJORD: Free-form Continuous Dynamics for Scalable Reversible Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.01367/) (2018)
- [A Survey on Generative Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.02646/) (2022)
- [Adjoint Matching: Fine-tuning Flow and Diffusion Generative Models with Memoryless Stochastic Optimal Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.08861/) (2024)
- [Path Integral Sampler: a stochastic control approach for sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.15141/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Samplers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13834/) (2023)
- [An optimal control perspective on diffusion-based generative modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01364/) (2022)
- [Solving and Learning Nonlinear PDEs with Gaussian Processes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.12959/) (2021)
- [Adjoint Sampling: Highly Scalable Diffusion Samplers via Adjoint Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.11713/) (2025)
- [Operator-valued Kernels for Learning from Functional Response Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.08231/) (2015)
- [Learning Interpolations between Boltzmann Densities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.07388/) (2023)
- [A mean-field games laboratory for generative modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13534/) (2023)
- [Sampling in Unit Time with Kernel Fisher-Rao Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03892/) (2024)
- [Convergence of Deterministic and Stochastic Diffusion-Model Samplers: A Simple Analysis in Wasserstein Distance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.03210/) (2025)
- [Dynamical Measure Transport and Neural PDE Solvers for Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07873/) (2024)
- [Gradient Flows for Sampling: Mean-Field Models, Gaussian Approximations and Affine Invariance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.11024/) (2023)
- [An Explicit Expansion of the Kullback-Leibler Divergence along its Fisher-Rao Gradient Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.12229/) (2023)
- [Neural Sampling from Boltzmann Densities: Fisher-Rao Curves in the Wasserstein Geometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03282/) (2024)
- [Optimal Scheduling of Dynamic Transport](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14425/) (2025)
- [Measure transport with kernel mean embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.12967/) (2024)
- [Data-Efficient Kernel Methods for Learning Differential Equations and Their Solution Operators: Algorithms and Error Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.01036/) (2025)
- [PDPO: Parametric Density Path Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.18473/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Barron Optimal Transport I: Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.10875/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We bring a control perspective to the problem of identifying paths of measures for sampling via dynamic measure transport (DMT). We highlight the fact that commonly used paths may be poor choices for DMT and connect existing methods for learning alternate paths to mean-field games. Based on these connections we pose a flexible family of optimization problems for identifying tilted paths of measures for DMT and advocate for the use of objective terms which encourage smoothness of the corresponding velocities. We present a numerical algorithm for solving these problems based on recent Gaussian process methods for solution of partial differential equations and demonstrate the ability of our method to recover more efficient and smooth transport models compared to those which use an untilted reference path.