mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

The Quadratic Geometry of Flow Matching: Semantic Granularity Alignment for Text-to-Image Synthesis

arXiv 2603.10785 ↗First posted 11 Mar 2026cs.CVcited by 0

On the map: Diffusion models → Flow matching, time series and science

Abstract (arXiv)

In this work, we analyze the optimization dynamics of generative fine-tuning. We observe that under the Flow Matching framework, the standard MSE objective can be formulated as a Quadratic Form governed by a dynamically evolving Neural Tangent Kernel (NTK). This geometric perspective reveals a latent Data Interaction Matrix, where diagonal terms represent independent sample learning and off-diagonal terms encode residual correlation between heterogeneous features. Although standard training implicitly optimizes these cross-term interferences, it does so without explicit control; moreover, the prevailing data-homogeneity assumption may constrain the model's effective capacity. Motivated by this insight, we propose Semantic Granularity Alignment (SGA), using Text-to-Image synthesis as a testbed. SGA engineers targeted interventions in the vector residual field to mitigate gradient conflicts. Evaluations across DiT and U-Net architectures confirm that SGA advances the efficiency-quality trade-off by accelerating convergence and improving structural integrity.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Flow matching, time series and science, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 52 of its 70 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 11 Mar 2026.

Builds on

52 of 70 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024Generative Flows on Discrete State-Spaces: Enabling Multimodal Flows with Applications to Protein Co-Design7 Feb
  2. 2023Improving and generalizing flow-based generative models with minibatch optimal transport1 Feb
  3. 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modeling6 Oct
  4. 2022Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow7 Sep

Other references · 48

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36 more
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  4. 2026Alignment of Diffusion Model and Flow Matching for Text-to-Image Generation
  5. 2025Blockwise Flow Matching: Improving Flow Matching Models For Efficient High-Quality Generation
  6. 2026Flow-OPD: On-Policy Distillation for Flow Matching Models
  7. 2026PG-MAP: Joint MAP Optimization for Inference-Time Alignment of Diffusion and Flow-Matching Models
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