Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Ren, Yinuo, Gao, Wenhao, Ying, Lexing, Rotskoff, Grant M., Han, Jiequn
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21655
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866918349001195520
author Ren, Yinuo
Gao, Wenhao
Ying, Lexing
Rotskoff, Grant M.
Han, Jiequn
author_facet Ren, Yinuo
Gao, Wenhao
Ying, Lexing
Rotskoff, Grant M.
Han, Jiequn
contents We study inference-time scaling for diffusion models, where the goal is to adapt a pre-trained model to new target distributions without retraining. Existing guidance-based methods are simple but introduce bias, while particle-based corrections suffer from weight degeneracy and high computational cost. We introduce DriftLite, a lightweight, training-free particle-based approach that steers the inference dynamics on the fly with provably optimal stability control. DriftLite exploits a previously unexplored degree of freedom in the Fokker-Planck equation between the drift and particle potential, and yields two practical instantiations: Variance- and Energy-Controlling Guidance (VCG/ECG) for approximating the optimal drift with minimal overhead. Across Gaussian mixture models, particle systems, and large-scale protein-ligand co-folding problems, DriftLite consistently reduces variance and improves sample quality over pure guidance and sequential Monte Carlo baselines. These results highlight a principled, efficient route toward scalable inference-time adaptation of diffusion models. Our source code is publicly available at https://github.com/yinuoren/DriftLite.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_21655
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle DriftLite: Lightweight Drift Control for Inference-Time Scaling of Diffusion Models
Ren, Yinuo
Gao, Wenhao
Ying, Lexing
Rotskoff, Grant M.
Han, Jiequn
Machine Learning
We study inference-time scaling for diffusion models, where the goal is to adapt a pre-trained model to new target distributions without retraining. Existing guidance-based methods are simple but introduce bias, while particle-based corrections suffer from weight degeneracy and high computational cost. We introduce DriftLite, a lightweight, training-free particle-based approach that steers the inference dynamics on the fly with provably optimal stability control. DriftLite exploits a previously unexplored degree of freedom in the Fokker-Planck equation between the drift and particle potential, and yields two practical instantiations: Variance- and Energy-Controlling Guidance (VCG/ECG) for approximating the optimal drift with minimal overhead. Across Gaussian mixture models, particle systems, and large-scale protein-ligand co-folding problems, DriftLite consistently reduces variance and improves sample quality over pure guidance and sequential Monte Carlo baselines. These results highlight a principled, efficient route toward scalable inference-time adaptation of diffusion models. Our source code is publicly available at https://github.com/yinuoren/DriftLite.
title DriftLite: Lightweight Drift Control for Inference-Time Scaling of Diffusion Models
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21655