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In this paper, we propose a novel numerical scheme to optimize the gradient flows for learning energy-based models (EBMs). From a perspective of physical simulation, we redefine the problem of approximating the gradient flow utilizing…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2023-05-01 Yang Wu , Pengxu Wei , Liang Lin

Variational inference is a technique that approximates a target distribution by optimizing within the parameter space of variational families. On the other hand, Wasserstein gradient flows describe optimization within the space of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-11-01 Mingxuan Yi , Song Liu

We study the Wasserstein gradient flow of semi-discrete energies in the space of probability measures, that is functionals depending on two measures-one being an absolutely continuous density and the other an atomic measure. These energies…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2026-03-05 Joao Miguel Machado

We study the emergence of gradient flows in Wasserstein distance as high friction limits of an abstract Euler flow generated by an energy functional. We develop a relative energy calculation that connects the Euler flow to the gradient flow…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2021-03-22 Corrado Lattanzio , Athanasios E. Tzavaras

Wasserstein gradient flows are continuous time dynamics that define curves of steepest descent to minimize an objective function over the space of probability measures (i.e., the Wasserstein space). This objective is typically a divergence…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-02-23 Adil Salim , Anna Korba , Giulia Luise

Wasserstein distances are metrics on probability distributions inspired by the problem of optimal mass transportation. Roughly speaking, they measure the minimal effort required to reconfigure the probability mass of one distribution in…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-04-10 Victor M. Panaretos , Yoav Zemel

We study a system of drift-diffusion PDEs for a potentially infinite number of incompressible phases, subject to a joint pointwise volume constraint. Our analysis is based on the interpretation as a collection of coupled Wasserstein…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2024-11-22 Clément Cancès , Daniel Matthes , Ismael Medina , Bernhard Schmitzer

We compute the ground state $u$ of the Gross--Pitaevskii equation (GPE) via Wasserstein gradient descent in diffeomorphism space. We represent the density $\rho=u^2$ as the push-forward of a fixed reference measure through a parameterized…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2026-03-17 Xiangxiong Zhang , Haomin Zhou

In this paper, we describe a possible generalization of the Wasserstein 2-metric, originally defined on the space of scalar probability densities, to the space of Hermitian matrices with trace one, and to the space of matrix-valued…

Mathematical Physics · Physics 2016-10-11 Yongxin Chen , Tryphon T. Georgiou , Allen Tannenbaum

We analyze some parabolic PDEs with different drift terms which are gradient flows in the Wasserstein space and consider the corresponding discrete-in-time JKO scheme. We prove with optimal transport techniques how to control the L p and L…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2019-11-26 Simone Di Marino , Filippo Santambrogio

Recently, Deng et al. (2026) proposed Generative Modeling via Drifting (GMD), a novel framework for generative tasks. This note presents an analysis of GMD through the lens of Wasserstein Gradient Flows (WGF), i.e., the path of steepest…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Arthur Gretton , Li Kevin Wenliang , Alexandre Galashov , James Thornton , Valentin De Bortoli , Arnaud Doucet

We revisit the variational characterization of conservative diffusion as entropic gradient flow and provide for it a probabilistic interpretation based on stochastic calculus. It was shown by Jordan, Kinderlehrer, and Otto that, for…

Probability · Mathematics 2020-08-24 Ioannis Karatzas , Walter Schachermayer , Bertram Tschiderer

We study Fokker--Planck equations with symmetric, positive definite mobility matrices capturing diffusion in heterogeneous environments. A weighted Wasserstein metric is introduced for which these equations are gradient flows. This metric…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-19 Hailiang Liu , Athanasios E. Tzavaras

The blooming diffusion probabilistic models (DPMs) have garnered significant interest due to their impressive performance and the elegant inspiration they draw from physics. While earlier DPMs relied upon the Markovian assumption, recent…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-12-12 Bowen Sun , Shibao Zheng

Optimal transport (OT) provides powerful tools for comparing probability measures in various types. The Wasserstein distance which arises naturally from the idea of OT is widely used in many machine learning applications. Unfortunately,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-06-03 Shu Liu , Haodong Sun , Hongyuan Zha

We show that the continuous-time gradient descent in Rn can be viewed as an optimal controlled evolution for a suitable action functional; a similar result holds for stochastic gradient descent. We then provide an analogous characterization…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-03 Yongxin Chen , Tryphon Georgiou , Michele Pavon

We study a natural Wasserstein gradient flow on manifolds of probability distributions with discrete sample spaces. We derive the Riemannian structure for the probability simplex from the dynamical formulation of the Wasserstein distance on…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-04-19 Wuchen Li , Guido Montufar

For addressing optimisation tasks on finite dimensional quantum systems, we give a comprehensive account of the foundations of gradient flows on Riemannian manifolds including new developments: we extend former results from Lie groups such…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2010-12-07 T. Schulte-Herbrueggen , S. J. Glaser , G. Dirr , U. Helmke

We introduce Wasserstein-like dynamical transport distances between vector-valued densities on the real line. The mobility function from the scalar theory is replaced by a mobility matrix, that is subject to positivity and concavity…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2016-01-18 Jonathan Zinsl , Daniel Matthes

Flow matching has recently emerged as a flexible and efficient framework for generative modelling by learning deterministic transport dynamics between probability measures. In this work, we extend flow matching to the space of probability…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Moritz Piening , Richard Duong , Gabriele Steidl