Universality of Gaussian-Mixture Reverse Kernels in Conditional Diffusion
On the map: Diffusion models → Diffusion foundations and sampling
Abstract (arXiv)
We prove that conditional diffusion models whose reverse kernels are finite Gaussian mixtures with ReLU-network logits can approximate suitably regular target distributions arbitrarily well in context-averaged conditional KL divergence, up to an irreducible terminal mismatch that typically vanishes with increasing diffusion horizon. A path-space decomposition reduces the output error to this mismatch plus per-step reverse-kernel errors; assuming each reverse kernel factors through a finite-dimensional feature map, each step becomes a static conditional density approximation problem, solved by composing Norets' Gaussian-mixture theory with quantitative ReLU bounds. Under exact terminal matching the resulting neural reverse-kernel class is dense in conditional KL.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Diffusion foundations and sampling, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 20 of its 31 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 15 Apr 2026.
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20 of 31 references.
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- 2024An Overview of Diffusion Models: Applications, Guided Generation, Statistical Rates and Optimization11 Apr
- 2024Unveil Conditional Diffusion Models with Classifier-free Guidance: A Sharp Statistical Theory18 Mar
- 2023Improved DDIM Sampling with Moment Matching Gaussian Mixtures8 Nov
- 2023Gaussian Mixture Solvers for Diffusion Models2 Nov
- 2023Soft Mixture Denoising: Beyond the Expressive Bottleneck of Diffusion Models25 Sep
- 2023Diffusion Models are Minimax Optimal Distribution Estimators3 Mar
- 2023Score Approximation, Estimation and Distribution Recovery of Diffusion Models on Low-Dimensional Data14 Feb
- 2022Improved Analysis of Score-based Generative Modeling: User-Friendly Bounds under Minimal Smoothness Assumptions3 Nov
- 2022Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance26 Jul
- 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models20 Dec
- 2021Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis11 May
- 2021Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models18 Feb
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Other references · 5
- 2015Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamicscited by 7,005
- 2022Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understandingcited by 6,322
- 2019Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distributioncited by 4,067
- 2016Error bounds for approximations with deep ReLU networkscited by 567
- 2020Deep Network Approximation for Smooth Functionscited by 163
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- 2026From Score Approximation to Distribution Approximation in Score-Based Diffusion Models
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