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Approximating a probability distribution using a set of particles is a fundamental problem in machine learning and statistics, with applications including clustering and quantization. Formally, we seek a weighted mixture of Dirac measures…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-24 Ayoub Belhadji , Daniel Sharp , Youssef Marzouk

We present a novel multiscale framework for analyzing sequences of probability measures in Wasserstein spaces over Euclidean domains. Exploiting the intrinsic geometry of optimal transport, we construct a multiscale transform applicable to…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2026-04-13 Wael Mattar , Nir Sharon

Flow Matching has recently gained attention in generative modeling as a simple and flexible alternative to diffusion models. While existing statistical guarantees adapt tools from the analysis of diffusion models, we take a different…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-18 Lea Kunkel , Mathias Trabs

We propose a variational finite volume scheme to approximate the solutions to Wasserstein gradient flows. The time discretization is based on an implicit linearization of the Wasserstein distance expressed thanks to Benamou-Brenier formula,…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2019-07-22 Clément Cancès , Thomas O. Gallouët , Gabriele Todeschi

We develop in this paper a new regularized flow dynamic approach to construct efficient numerical schemes for Wasserstein gradient flows in Lagrangian coordinates. Instead of approximating the Wasserstein distance which needs to solve…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2024-06-24 Qing Cheng , Qianqian Liu , Wenbin Chen , Jie Shen

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 provide finite-particle convergence rates for the Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD) algorithm in the Kernelized Stein Discrepancy ($\mathsf{KSD}$) and Wasserstein-2 metrics. Our key insight is that the time derivative of the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-06-10 Sayan Banerjee , Krishnakumar Balasubramanian , Promit Ghosal

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 study the convergence of gradient flow for the training of deep neural networks. If Residual Neural Networks are a popular example of very deep architectures, their training constitutes a challenging optimization problem due notably to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-22 Raphaël Barboni , Gabriel Peyré , François-Xavier Vialard

Motivated by the 2D class averaging problem in single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), we present a k-means algorithm based on a rotationally-invariant Wasserstein metric for images. Unlike existing methods that are based on…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2021-05-31 Rohan Rao , Amit Moscovich , Amit Singer

In the context of kernel methods, the similarity between data points is encoded by the kernel function which is often defined thanks to the Euclidean distance, a common example being the squared exponential kernel. Recently, other distances…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-06 Henri De Plaen , Michaël Fanuel , Johan A. K. Suykens

This paper contains two contributions in the study of optimal transport on metric graphs. Firstly, we prove a Benamou-Brenier formula for the Wasserstein distance, which establishes the equivalence of static and dynamical optimal transport.…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2022-05-02 Matthias Erbar , Dominik Forkert , Jan Maas , Delio Mugnolo

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

Wasserstein distributionally robust optimization offers a framework for model fitting in machine learning under potential shifts in the data distribution. We study a regularized variant of this problem in which entropic smoothing produces a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-28 Tam Le

Vision-Language Latent Diffusion Models (LDMs) (Rombach et al., 2022) provide powerful generative priors for inverse problems. However, existing LDM-based inverse solvers typically require a large number of neural function evaluations…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-11 Alessio Spagnoletti , Tim Y. J. Wang , Marcelo Pereyra , O. Deniz Akyildiz

In this paper, we study higher-order-accurate-in-time minimizing movements schemes for Wasserstein gradient flows. We introduce a novel accelerated second-order scheme, leveraging the differential structure of the Wasserstein space in both…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2025-12-23 Raymond Chu , Matt Jacobs

Squared Wasserstein distance is a frequently used tool to measure discrepancy between probability distributions. This distance is typically computed between empirical measures of size $n$ from two underlying random samples. Unfortunately,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-20 Peter Matthew Jacobs , Jeff M. Phillips

The Wasserstein space of probability measures is known for its intricate Riemannian structure, which underpins the Wasserstein geometry and enables gradient flow algorithms. However, the Wasserstein geometry may not be suitable for certain…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2025-05-23 Zhengxin Zhang , Ziv Goldfeld , Kristjan Greenewald , Youssef Mroueh , Bharath K. Sriperumbudur

The Wasserstein distance is a powerful metric based on the theory of optimal transport. It gives a natural measure of the distance between two distributions with a wide range of applications. In contrast to a number of the common…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-16 Jung Hun Oh , Maryam Pouryahya , Aditi Iyer , Aditya P. Apte , Allen Tannenbaum , Joseph O. Deasy

A popular method to perform adversarial attacks on neuronal networks is the so-called fast gradient sign method and its iterative variant. In this paper, we interpret this method as an explicit Euler discretization of a differential…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-17 Lukas Weigand , Tim Roith , Martin Burger