mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Hierarchical Discrete Flow Matching for Graph Generation

arXiv 2604.00236 ↗First posted 31 Mar 2026cs.LGcited by 1

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

Abstract (arXiv)

Denoising-based models, including diffusion and flow matching, have led to substantial advances in graph generation. Despite this progress, such models remain constrained by two fundamental limitations: a computational cost that scales quadratically with the number of nodes and a large number of function evaluations required during generation. In this work, we introduce a novel hierarchical generative framework that reduces the number of node pairs that must be evaluated and adopts discrete flow matching to significantly decrease the number of denoising iterations. We empirically demonstrate that our approach more effectively captures graph distributions while substantially reducing generation time.

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Flow matching, time series and science, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 42 of its 56 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 31 Mar 2026.

Builds on

42 of 56 references.

Closest ancestors · 13

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026Unrestrained Simplex Denoising for Discrete Data. A Non-Markovian Approach Applied to Graph Generation30 Mar
  2. 2025Simple and Critical Iterative Denoising: A Recasting of Discrete Diffusion in Graph Generation27 Mar
  3. 2024DeFoG: Discrete Flow Matching for Graph Generation5 Oct
  4. 2024Discrete Flow Matching22 Jul
  5. 2024Advancing Graph Generation through Beta Diffusion13 Jun
  6. 2024Variational Flow Matching for Graph Generation7 Jun
  7. 2024Discrete-state Continuous-time Diffusion for Graph Generation19 May
  8. 2024Generative Flows on Discrete State-Spaces: Enabling Multimodal Flows with Applications to Protein Co-Design7 Feb
  9. 2023Sparse Training of Discrete Diffusion Models for Graph Generation3 Nov
  10. 2023Autoregressive Diffusion Model for Graph Generation17 Jul
  11. 2023Efficient and Degree-Guided Graph Generation via Discrete Diffusion Modeling6 May
  12. 2022Diffusion Models for Graphs Benefit From Discrete State Spaces4 Oct
1 more
  1. 2022Score-based Generative Modeling of Graphs via the System of Stochastic Differential Equations5 Feb

Other references · 29

  1. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
  2. 2017MoleculeNet: A Benchmark for Molecular Machine Learningcited by 1,037
  3. 2018Hierarchical Graph Representation Learning with Differentiable Poolingcited by 786
  4. 2016Automatic chemical design using a data-driven continuous representation of moleculescited by 762
  5. 2018Junction Tree Variational Autoencoder for Molecular Graph Generationcited by 647
  6. 2018GraphRNN: Generating Realistic Graphs with Deep Auto-regressive Modelscited by 406
  7. 2020GraphAF: a Flow-based Autoregressive Model for Molecular Graph Generationcited by 301
  8. 2017Grammar Variational Autoencodercited by 283
  9. 2019Efficient Graph Generation with Graph Recurrent Attention Networkscited by 231
  10. 2020Hierarchical Generation of Molecular Graphs using Structural Motifscited by 204
  11. 2018Fr'echet ChemNet Distance: A metric for generative models for molecules in drug discoverycited by 191
  12. 2020MoFlow: An Invertible Flow Model for Generating Molecular Graphscited by 183
17 more
  1. 2021GraphDF: A Discrete Flow Model for Molecular Graph Generationcited by 177
  2. 2020Graph Clustering with Graph Neural Networkscited by 163
  3. 2017Scene Graph Generation from Objects, Phrases and Region Captionscited by 154
  4. 2019GraphNVP: An Invertible Flow Model for Generating Molecular Graphscited by 115
  5. 2019Graph Normalizing Flowscited by 103
  6. 2022SPECTRE: Spectral Conditioning Helps to Overcome the Expressivity Limits of One-shot Graph Generatorscited by 96
  7. 2021Understanding Pooling in Graph Neural Networkscited by 69
  8. 2020GraphGen: A Scalable Approach to Domain-agnostic Labeled Graph Generationcited by 65
  9. 2018Generative Code Modeling with Graphscited by 59
  10. 2019Edge Contraction Pooling for Graph Neural Networkscited by 53
  11. 2022Graph Pooling for Graph Neural Networks: Progress, Challenges, and Opportunitiescited by 52
  12. 2023Graph Generation with Diffusion Mixturecited by 52
  13. 2023Efficient and Scalable Graph Generation through Iterative Local Expansioncited by 35
  14. 2018Sequence-to-Action: End-to-End Semantic Graph Generation for Semantic Parsingcited by 21
  15. 2023Discrete Graph Auto-Encodercited by 10
  16. 2024GLAD: Improving Latent Graph Generative Modeling with Simple Quantizationcited by 8
  17. 2018Generating Triples with Adversarial Networks for Scene Graph Constructioncited by 5

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.

1 paper.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025The Generation Phases of Flow Matching: a Denoising Perspective
  2. 2026Efficient Graph Generation via Direct Prediction and Flow Matching
  3. 2025Bures-Wasserstein Flow Matching for Graph Generation
  4. 2024Exploring Diffusion and Flow Matching Under Generator Matching
  5. 2025Efficiency vs. Fidelity: A Comparative Analysis of Diffusion Probabilistic Models and Flow Matching on Low-Resource Hardware
  6. 2026Context-weighted Discrete Flow Matching
  7. 2025Graph Flow Matching: Enhancing Image Generation with Neighbor-Aware Flow Fields
  8. 2026Training Flow Matching: The Role of Weighting and Parameterization