Exact Global MCMC with Denoising Diffusion
Read the original on arXiv Machine Learning →The Flow has not summarised this story yet — read it at arXiv Machine Learning.
The Flow has not summarised this story yet — read it at arXiv Machine Learning.
The paper introduces a new Markov chain Monte Carlo method that samples from multimodal distributions by interpolating along the diffusion path of a noising diffusion process, preserving mode weights and improving mixing. It proposes a Metropolis-adjusted diffusion path (MAD-Path) sampler that corrects for bias from approximate score estimates and discretization errors, ensuring the target distribution remains invariant. Experiments on Bayesian posteriors demonstrate that MAD-Path outperforms tempering-based MCMC and unadjusted diffusion samplers in global exploration and accurate mode-weight estimation.
The paper investigates training diffusion models to sample from distributions defined by unnormalized densities or energy functions. It benchmarks various diffusion-structured inference techniques, including simulation-based variational methods and off-policy approaches such as continuous generative flow networks, highlighting their relative strengths and challenging some prior claims. Additionally, the authors introduce a new exploration strategy for off-policy methods that employs local search in the target space with a replay buffer, demonstrating improved sample quality across multiple target distributions.
arXiv:2609.14596v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Training-free diffusion inverse solvers typically choose between local measurement guidance and costly clean-space posterior updates. Independent poste...
arXiv:2602. 09639v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Denoising diffusion models (DDMs) are state-of-the-art methods for learning densities from data across numerous domains, yet many aspects of the training and sampling pipeline remain poorly understood.
One of the primary challenges in Bayesian inference on the parameters of a diffusion model from discrete observations is the unavailability of an analytical expression for the transition density function between consecutive observation times, which is needed to derive the likelihood function. Extending previous studies that solve Fokker-Planck (FP) type partial differential equations with Normalizing Flows, we propose a new Normalizing Flow architecture to learn the transition density function of the diffusion process between two observation times.
arXiv:2606. 04324v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: One of the primary challenges in Bayesian inference on the parameters of a diffusion model from discrete observations is the unavailability of an analytical expression for the transition density function between consecutive observation times, which is needed to derive the likelihood function.