Flow-Based Generative Modeling

Overview

Flow-based generative modeling represents generation as a transformation of probability mass, often by integrating a continuous-time velocity field from noise to data or composing invertible normalizing-flow layers. Flow matching and rectified flow train velocity fields by regression along selected paths; optimal-transport couplings, stochastic interpolants, discrete Markov flows, and flow maps extend the toolkit to different data types and sampling budgets. Researchers apply these methods to images, language, molecules, physical fields, and robot actions, assessing fidelity and diversity alongside likelihood, constraint satisfaction, calibration, and runtime. A central challenge is achieving one- or few-step generation without sacrificing quality or mode coverage, while improving path design, robustness, geometric and physical consistency, and theoretical guarantees.

Latest papers

CardsList

563 papers125 papers in the last four weeks, up 131% on the four weeks before. 0.7% of all new papers.

  1. Learning Unbiased Permutations via Flow Matching

    May 16, 2026Yimeng Min, Carla P. GomesFlow MatchingCombinatorial Optimization

  2. CAB: Accelerating Flow and Diffusion Sampling via Rectification and Corrected Adams-Bashforth

    May 16, 2026Anuska Roy, Pravin NairFew-Step Diffusion SamplingGenerative Flow Networks

  3. Wavelet Flow Matching for Multi-Scale Physics Emulation

    May 15, 2026Gabriele Accarino, Juan Nathaniel, Carla Roesch +4Flow MatchingPDE Surrogate Modeling

  4. StAD: Stein Amortized Divergence for Fast Likelihoods with Diffusion and Flow

    May 15, 2026Gurjeet Jagwani, Stephen Thorp, Sinan Deger +1Continuous Normalizing FlowsFlow-Based Generative Modeling

  5. Entropy Across the Bridge: Conditional-Marginal Discretization for Flow and Schrödinger Samplers

    May 15, 2026Bruno Trentini, Dejan Stancevic, Michael M. Bronstein +2Flow MatchingSchrödinger Bridges

  6. Aligning Latent Geometry for Spherical Flow Matching in Image Generation

    May 14, 2026Tuna Han Salih Meral, Kaan Oktay, Hidir Yesiltepe +2Flow MatchingNeural Representation Geometry

  7. The Velocity Deficit: Initial Energy Injection for Flow Matching

    May 14, 2026Linze Li, Zong-Wei Hong, Shen Zhang +4Flow MatchingImage Generation

  8. AnyFlow: Any-Step Video Diffusion Model with On-Policy Flow Map Distillation

    May 13, 2026Yuchao Gu, Guian Fang, Yuxin Jiang +4Video Diffusion ModelsDiffusion Model Distillation

  9. Sampling from Flow Language Models via Marginal-Conditioned Bridges

    May 13, 2026Iskander Azangulov, Leo ZhangFlow MatchingLanguage Model Decoding

  10. Path-independent Flow Matching for Multi-parameter Generative Dynamics

    May 13, 2026Francisco Téllez, AmirHossein Zamani, Philippe Martin +5Flow MatchingFlow Map Learning

  11. Support-Conditioned Flow Matching Is Kernel Smoothing

    May 13, 2026Daniel Matsui SmolaFlow MatchingCross-Attention

  12. Asymmetric Flow Models

    May 13, 2026Hansheng Chen, Jan Ackermann, Minseo Kim +2Flow MatchingT2I Generation

  13. Coreset-Induced Conditional Velocity Flow Matching

    May 13, 2026Xiao Wang, Zihua She, Jianxi SuConditional Flow MatchingRectified Flow

  14. Discrete MeanFlow: One-Step Generation via Conditional Transition Kernels

    May 12, 2026Fairoz Nower Khan, Nabuat Zaman Nahim, Md Sajid Ahmed +2Markov ModelsMeanFlow

  15. Constraint-Aware Flow Matching: Decision Aligned End-to-End Training for Constrained Sampling

    May 12, 2026Jacob K. Christopher, James E. Warner, Ferdinando FiorettoConstrained Generative ModelingFlow Matching

  16. Aligning Flow Map Policies with Optimal Q-Guidance

    May 12, 2026Christos Ziakas, Alessandra Russo, Avishek Joey BoseFlow-Based Generative ModelingOffline-To-Online RL

  17. hh-control: Training-Free Camera Control via Block-Conditional Gibbs Refinement

    May 12, 2026Yuzhu Wang, Xi Ye, Duo Su +2Markov Chain Monte CarloCamera-Controlled Video Generation

  18. One-Step Generative Modeling via Wasserstein Gradient Flows

    May 12, 2026Jiaqi Han, Puheng Li, Qiushan Guo +3Wasserstein Gradient FlowsImage Generation

  19. Sharpen Your Flow: Sharpness-Aware Sampling for Flow Matching

    May 12, 2026Aditi Gupta, Soon Hoe Lim, Annan Yu +1Flow MatchingFlow-Based Generative Modeling

  20. Language Modeling with Hyperspherical Flows

    May 11, 2026Justin Deschenaux, Caglar GulcehreNormalizing FlowsContinuous Normalizing Flows

  21. Follow the Mean: Reference-Guided Flow Matching

    May 11, 2026Pedro M. P. Curvo, Maksim Zhdanov, Floor Eijkelboom +1Flow MatchingFlow-Based Generative Modeling

  22. UFO: A Unified Flow-Oriented Framework for Robust Continual Graph Learning

    May 11, 2026Danhui Zhang, Zhe Wang, Qing Qing +6Replay-Based Continual LearningFlow-Based Generative Modeling

  23. Offline Preference Optimization for Rectified Flow with Noise-Tracked Pairs

    May 10, 2026Yunhong Lu, Qichao Wang, Hengyuan Cao +2T2I GenerationRectified Flow

  24. Kinetic-Optimal Scheduling with Moment Correction for Metric-Induced Discrete Flow Matching in Zero-Shot Text-to-Speech

    May 10, 2026Dong Yang, Yiyi Cai, Haoyu Zhang +2Flow MatchingTTS Synthesis

  25. dFlowGRPO: Rate-Aware Policy Optimization for Discrete Flow Models

    May 10, 2026Zhengyan Wan, Yidong Ouyang, Panwen Hu +1Group Relative Policy OptimizationImage Generation

  26. On Variance Reduction in Learning Mean Flows

    May 10, 2026Juanwu Lu, Ziran WangFlow MatchingMeanFlow

  27. Discrete Flow Matching: Convergence Guarantees Under Minimal Assumptions

    May 9, 2026Le-Tuyet-Nhi Pham, Giovanni Conforti, Zhenjie Ren +1Flow MatchingGenerative Modeling