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Main Authors: Theodoropoulos, Panagiotis, Nam, Juno, Theodorou, Evangelos, Choi, Jaemoo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.04675
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author Theodoropoulos, Panagiotis
Nam, Juno
Theodorou, Evangelos
Choi, Jaemoo
author_facet Theodoropoulos, Panagiotis
Nam, Juno
Theodorou, Evangelos
Choi, Jaemoo
contents Transportation on graphs is a fundamental challenge across many domains, where decisions must respect topological and operational constraints. Despite the need for actionable policies, existing graph-transport methods lack this expressivity. They rely on restrictive assumptions, fail to generalize across sparse topologies, and scale poorly with graph size and time horizon. To address these issues, we introduce Generalized Schrödinger Bridge on Graphs (GSBoG), a novel scalable data-driven framework for learning executable controlled continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC) policies on arbitrary graphs under state cost augmented dynamics. Notably, GSBoG learns trajectory-level policies, avoiding dense global solvers and thereby enhancing scalability. This is achieved via a likelihood optimization approach, satisfying the endpoint marginals, while simultaneously optimizing intermediate behavior under state-dependent running costs. Extensive experimentation on challenging real-world graph topologies shows that GSBoG reliably learns accurate, topology-respecting policies while optimizing application-specific intermediate state costs, highlighting its broad applicability and paving new avenues for cost-aware dynamical transport on general graphs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_04675
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Generalized Schrödinger Bridge on Graphs
Theodoropoulos, Panagiotis
Nam, Juno
Theodorou, Evangelos
Choi, Jaemoo
Machine Learning
Transportation on graphs is a fundamental challenge across many domains, where decisions must respect topological and operational constraints. Despite the need for actionable policies, existing graph-transport methods lack this expressivity. They rely on restrictive assumptions, fail to generalize across sparse topologies, and scale poorly with graph size and time horizon. To address these issues, we introduce Generalized Schrödinger Bridge on Graphs (GSBoG), a novel scalable data-driven framework for learning executable controlled continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC) policies on arbitrary graphs under state cost augmented dynamics. Notably, GSBoG learns trajectory-level policies, avoiding dense global solvers and thereby enhancing scalability. This is achieved via a likelihood optimization approach, satisfying the endpoint marginals, while simultaneously optimizing intermediate behavior under state-dependent running costs. Extensive experimentation on challenging real-world graph topologies shows that GSBoG reliably learns accurate, topology-respecting policies while optimizing application-specific intermediate state costs, highlighting its broad applicability and paving new avenues for cost-aware dynamical transport on general graphs.
title Generalized Schrödinger Bridge on Graphs
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.04675