The paper investigates Wasserstein-Fisher-Rao (WFR) gradient flows for sampling from probability distributions known only up to a normalisation constant. It demonstrates that for strongly log-concave targets satisfying certain curvature conditions, WFR flows preserve strong log-concavity—unlike pure Wasserstein flows, which only do so in the Gaussian case. Leveraging this property, the authors derive explicit non-asymptotic convergence rates for the symmetrised Kullback-Leibler divergence, showing an additive decomposition into Wasserstein and Fisher‑Rao contributions and eliminating the need for a warm start.
By Francesca Romana Crucinio, Sahani Pathiraja
arXiv:2411. 00214v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Otto's Wasserstein gradient flow of the inclusive (forward) Kullback--Leibler (KL) divergence offers a principled framework for analyzing statistical inference algorithms, yet algorithms targeting the exclusive (reverse) KL divergence are rarely studied with such tools.
By Jia-Jie Zhu
arXiv:2610.02081v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: There has been a proliferation of sampling algorithms based on Wasserstein gradient flows (WGF) and forward-only diffusion processes (FODP), often acco...
By Daniel McBride, Pratik Khandagale, Cristina Garcia-Cardona, Yen Ting Lin
arXiv:2607. 04738v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Reconstructing population dynamics is a central problem in the physical and data sciences.
By Markus Heinonen, Yair Shenfeld, Ricardo Baptista, Daniel Waxman, Dmitry Batenkov, Tim Cooijmans, Eli Bingham
arXiv:2511.18060v3 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Wasserstein-Fisher-Rao (WFR) gradient flows have been recently proposed as a powerful sampling tool that combines the advantages of pure Wass...
By Francesca Romana Crucinio, Sahani Pathiraja
Reconstructing population dynamics is a central problem in the physical and data sciences. Often, the dynamics are modeled as a Wasserstein gradient flow (WGF): a curve of distributions driven by an energy functional.
arXiv:2601. 08527v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We propose a novel method for sampling from unnormalized Boltzmann densities based on a probability flow ordinary differential equation (ODE) derived from linear stochastic interpolants.
By Chenguang Duan, Yuling Jiao, Gabriele Steidl, Christian Wald, Jerry Zhijian Yang, Ruizhe Zhang
Particle-based variational inference (ParVI) methods approximate an intractable target distribution by evolving an ensemble of interacting samples. Existing approaches rely predominantly on kernel-based repulsion (e.
Neural Transport Nested Sampling (NTNS) is a new sampling algorithm that merges nested sampling with neural flow-based methods to sample from Boltzmann distributions of molecular systems. It employs a flow-matching velocity as the drift in a Metropolis–Hastings corrected Langevin kernel within a nested sampling loop, requiring only target energy evaluations and enabling scalable estimation of the full partition function for high-dimensional particle systems. Benchmarks on Lennard–Jones clusters up to 55 particles show NTNS reduces interatomic distance and energy Wasserstein errors by more than an order of magnitude compared to leading neural baselines, while also providing a calibrated, temperature-resolved partition function estimate that captures phase structure from a single run.
By David Yallup, Will Handley
arXiv:2606. 25265v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Particle-based variational inference (ParVI) methods approximate an intractable target distribution by evolving an ensemble of interacting samples.
By Vincent Pacelli, Akash Ratheesh, Evangelos Theodorou
The paper presents a new one‑step generative modeling framework for finite state spaces, leveraging discrete Wasserstein geometry to define a target‑relative KL gradient flow over a reversible Markov kernel. The authors implement this flow at the particle level using Markov jumps and encode the resulting transport updates into a latent‑conditioned generator, enabling one‑step inference after training. Experiments on a controlled setting confirm KL dissipation, consistency between particle dynamics and probability flow, and accurate numerical scaling, while a finite‑capacity neural generator successfully tracks the exact transport targets.
By Alessandro Micheli, Andrea Zerio, Samir Bhatt
arXiv:2608. 06283v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We study the problem of sampling from target distributions whose potentials are simultaneously non-smooth, subject to superlinear gradient growth, and non-convex.
By Iosif Lytras, Nikolaos Makras, Sotirios Sabanis