English

Reflected diffusion models adapt to low-dimensional data

Statistics Theory 2026-03-26 v1 Machine Learning Statistics Theory

Abstract

While the mathematical foundations of score-based generative models are increasingly well understood for unconstrained Euclidean spaces, many practical applications involve data restricted to bounded domains. This paper provides a statistical analysis of reflected diffusion models on the hypercube [0,1]D[0,1]^D for target distributions supported on dd-dimensional linear subspaces. A primary challenge in this setting is the absence of Gaussian transition kernels, which play a central role in standard theory in RD\mathbb{R}^D. By employing an easily implementable infinite series expansion of the transition densities, we develop analytic tools to bound the score function and its approximation by sparse ReLU networks. For target densities with Sobolev smoothness α\alpha, we establish a convergence rate in the 11-Wasserstein distance of order nα+1δ2α+dn^{-\frac{\alpha+1-\delta}{2\alpha+d}} for arbitrarily small δ>0\delta > 0, demonstrating that the generative algorithm fully adapts to the intrinsic dimension dd. These results confirm that the presence of reflecting boundaries does not degrade the fundamental statistical efficiency of the diffusion paradigm, matching the almost optimal rates known for unconstrained settings.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.24495,
  title  = {Reflected diffusion models adapt to low-dimensional data},
  author = {Asbjørn Holk and Claudia Strauch and Lukas Trottner},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.24495},
  year   = {2026}
}