Generative Diffusion Surrogates with Analytical Variance Schedule
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Abstract (arXiv)
Stochastic transport describes physical systems in which an initially structured distribution spreads under unresolved forcing, scattering, or heterogeneous media. Useful surrogates for such systems should be probabilistic, time-resolved, and able to represent non-Gaussian distributional structure. Generative diffusion models, which corrupt data with Gaussian noise and learn a reverse flow back to structured states, have these properties. Their noise schedules, however, are usually chosen heuristically: image and audio generation---the canonical use cases---provide no physical clock. In transport, by contrast, the variance, or mean-square displacement, is often known from macroscopic theory or empirical scaling even when the full distribution is not. Here we prescribe the forward noising rate as the time derivative of this variance, turning generative time into a calibrated transport clock. The variance path is enforced by construction, while the learned score field represents how non-Gaussian structure inherited from entrance data is smoothed along that path, requiring no intermediate-time physical transport data. For ballistic-to-diffusive transport in turbulent plasmas, the surrogate matches test-particle distributions, reproduces the laboratory-measured variance scale, and tracks the simulated kurtosis evolution without schedule tuning, enabling calibrated emulation and likelihood-based inference.
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References · 14
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
- 2020Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 8,964
- 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,426
- 2021Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 3,736
- 2021Variational Diffusion Modelscited by 1,145
- 2019Improved Precision and Recall Metric for Assessing Generative Modelscited by 925
- 2023Stochastic Interpolants: A Unifying Framework for Flows and Diffusionscited by 897
- 2021Diffusion Schr"odinger Bridge with Applications to Score-Based Generative Modelingcited by 594
- 2021Score-Based Generative Modeling with Critically-Damped Langevin Diffusioncited by 230
- 2021Physics-based Deep Learningcited by 67
- 2025Physics vs Distributions: Pareto Optimal Flow Matching with Physics Constraintscited by 26
- 2023Solving Inverse Physics Problems with Score Matchingcited by 15
2 more
- 2025Telegrapher's Generative Model via Kac Flowscited by 7
- 2023Physics-Preserving AI-Accelerated Simulations of Plasma Turbulencecited by 4
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- 2026Fast Sampling for Flows and Diffusions with Lazy and Point Mass Stochastic Interpolants
- 2024Speed-accuracy relations for diffusion models: Wisdom from nonequilibrium thermodynamics and optimal transport
- 2026Mean Velocity Matching: Rethinking Generative Dynamics in Diffusion Models
- 2025Optimizing Noise Schedules of Generative Models in High Dimensionss