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Main Authors: Osman, Nagham, Jiang, Keyue, Buffelli, Davide, Dong, Xiaowen, Toni, Laura
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.01190
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author Osman, Nagham
Jiang, Keyue
Buffelli, Davide
Dong, Xiaowen
Toni, Laura
author_facet Osman, Nagham
Jiang, Keyue
Buffelli, Davide
Dong, Xiaowen
Toni, Laura
contents Graph generation is a critical task across scientific domains. Existing methods fall broadly into two categories: autoregressive models, which iteratively expand graphs, and one-shot models, such as diffusion, which generate the full graph at once. In this work, we provide an analysis of these two paradigms and reveal a key trade-off: autoregressive models stand out in capturing fine-grained local structures, such as degree and clustering properties, whereas one-shot models excel at modeling global patterns, such as spectral distributions. Building on this, we propose LGDC (latent graph diffusion via spectrum-preserving coarsening), a hybrid framework that combines strengths of both approaches. LGDC employs a spectrum-preserving coarsening-decoarsening to bidirectionally map between graphs and a latent space, where diffusion efficiently generates latent graphs before expansion restores detail. This design captures both local and global properties with improved efficiency. Empirically, LGDC matches autoregressive models on locally structured datasets (Tree) and diffusion models on globally structured ones (Planar, Community-20), validating the benefits of hybrid generation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_01190
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle LGDC: Latent Graph Diffusion via Spectrum-Preserving Coarsening
Osman, Nagham
Jiang, Keyue
Buffelli, Davide
Dong, Xiaowen
Toni, Laura
Machine Learning
Graph generation is a critical task across scientific domains. Existing methods fall broadly into two categories: autoregressive models, which iteratively expand graphs, and one-shot models, such as diffusion, which generate the full graph at once. In this work, we provide an analysis of these two paradigms and reveal a key trade-off: autoregressive models stand out in capturing fine-grained local structures, such as degree and clustering properties, whereas one-shot models excel at modeling global patterns, such as spectral distributions. Building on this, we propose LGDC (latent graph diffusion via spectrum-preserving coarsening), a hybrid framework that combines strengths of both approaches. LGDC employs a spectrum-preserving coarsening-decoarsening to bidirectionally map between graphs and a latent space, where diffusion efficiently generates latent graphs before expansion restores detail. This design captures both local and global properties with improved efficiency. Empirically, LGDC matches autoregressive models on locally structured datasets (Tree) and diffusion models on globally structured ones (Planar, Community-20), validating the benefits of hybrid generation.
title LGDC: Latent Graph Diffusion via Spectrum-Preserving Coarsening
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.01190