Posterior Refinement: Fast Language Generation via Any-Order Flow Maps
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Abstract (arXiv)
Non-autoregressive generation offers a powerful paradigm for iterative refinement, allowing models to recursively critique, erase and regenerate arbitrary subsets of tokens. However, existing non-autoregressive models fail to realize this potential. Masked Diffusion Models (MDMs) suffer from factorization error, causing sample quality to collapse when generating multiple tokens simultaneously. Flow Map Language Models (FMLMs) circumvent this bottleneck via joint sequence transport for excellent few-step generation, but sacrifice the inference-time flexibility of MDMs. We introduce FMLM+, a framework that bridges this gap by equipping FMLM with masking-style noise schedules. While generating the full sequence in a single step, FMLM+ simultaneously scores the global consistency of each token a posteriori. We leverage this to introduce Posterior Refinement, a novel inference-time refinement strategy that enables the model to adaptively self-correct its outputs, matching the performance of discrete baselines with 32x fewer NFEs. Across diverse benchmarks, we demonstrate that FMLM+ with Posterior Refinement improves the speed--quality tradeoff over both MDM and FMLM families, providing a scalable foundation for high-fidelity language modeling.
Key facts. Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 48 of its 59 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 23 Jun 2026.
Builds on
48 of 59 references.
References · 48
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36 more
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 11.
11 papers.
- 2026Thinking with Looped Flowscited by 9
- 2026Discrete Beckmann Transport Models for One-Step Language Modeling and Reasoningcited by 3
- 2026Distilled Continuous Diffusion Language Models Can Write Code in Few Steps---or Onecited by 2
- 2026From Interface to Inference: Eliciting Any-Order Inference from Any-Order Modelscited by 1
- 2026Reasoning with Continuous Latent Diffusioncited by 1
- 2026Alpha Diffusion Language Models: Factorization Alone Is Not the Problemcited by 0
- 2026Gumbel Straight Flow: Distilling Autoregressive Models into One-step Flow Mapscited by 0
- 2026Clock Diffusion: Efficient Semi-Autoregressive Continuous Diffusion Language Modelscited by 0
- 2026Representation-Space MMD for Diffusion Language Modelscited by 0
- 2026On the Design Space of Continuous Diffusion Language Modelscited by 0
- 2026Next-Concept Modeling: Fast, Parallel Coarse-to-Fine Text Generationcited by 0
- 2026Next-Concept Modeling: Fast, Parallel Coarse-to-Fine Text Generation9 Oct 2026
- 2026On the Design Space of Continuous Diffusion Language Models9 Oct 2026
- 2026Representation-Space MMD for Diffusion Language Models5 Oct 2026
- 2026Clock Diffusion: Efficient Semi-Autoregressive Continuous Diffusion Language Models1 Oct 2026
- 2026Gumbel Straight Flow: Distilling Autoregressive Models into One-step Flow Maps30 Sep 2026
- 2026Alpha Diffusion Language Models: Factorization Alone Is Not the Problem29 Sep 2026
- 2026Reasoning with Continuous Latent Diffusion28 Sep 2026
- 2026Discrete Beckmann Transport Models for One-Step Language Modeling and Reasoning14 Sep 2026
- 2026Thinking with Looped Flows10 Sep 2026
- 2026Distilled Continuous Diffusion Language Models Can Write Code in Few Steps---or One3 Sep 2026
- 2026From Interface to Inference: Eliciting Any-Order Inference from Any-Order Models29 Jul 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2025On Powerful Ways to Generate: Autoregression, Diffusion, and Beyond
- 2026Forward-Free Diffusion Language Models with BPTT-Free Looped Refinement
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- 2026CoDR: Training-Free Confidence-Drift Remasking for Diffusion Language Models
- 2026UNIFUSION: Adapting Autoregressive Language Models into Discrete Diffusion under a Unified Reverse-Rate Objective
- 2025Esoteric Language Models: A Family of Any-Order Diffusion LLMs
- 2025FlashDLM: Accelerating Diffusion Language Model Inference via Efficient KV Caching and Guided Diffusion
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