SymDrift: One-Shot Generative Modeling under Symmetries

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Darouich, Samir, Tong, Vinh, Pastor-Pérez, Lluís, Bien, Tanja, Mualem, Loay, Niepert, Mathias
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
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author Darouich, Samir
Tong, Vinh
Pastor-Pérez, Lluís
Bien, Tanja
Mualem, Loay
Niepert, Mathias
author_facet Darouich, Samir
Tong, Vinh
Pastor-Pérez, Lluís
Bien, Tanja
Mualem, Loay
Niepert, Mathias
contents Generative modeling of physical systems, such as molecules, requires learning distributions that are invariant under global symmetries, such as rotations in three-dimensional space. Equivariant diffusion and flow matching models can incorporate such invariances effectively, even when trained on a non-invariant empirical distribution, but they typically rely on costly multi-step sampling. Recently, drifting models have emerged as an efficient alternative, enabling single-step generation and achieving state-of-the-art performance in generative modeling tasks. However, we show that drifting models face a symmetry-specific challenge, since an equivariant generator does not generally produce the same drifting field as the one obtained from the symmetrized target distribution. Addressing this issue would require expensive symmetrization of the empirical distribution. To avoid this cost, we propose SymDrift, a framework that makes the drifting field itself symmetry-aware. We introduce two complementary strategies: (i) a symmetrized drift in coordinate space based on optimal alignment, and (ii) a $G$-invariant embedding that removes symmetry ambiguity by construction. Empirically, SymDrift outperforms existing one-shot methods on standard benchmarks for conformer and transition state generation, while remaining competitive with significantly more expensive multi-step approaches. By enabling one-shot inference, SymDrift reduces computational overhead by up to 40$\times$ compared to existing baselines, making it promising for high-throughput applications such as virtual drug screening and large-scale reaction network exploration.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_06140
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SymDrift: One-Shot Generative Modeling under Symmetries
Darouich, Samir
Tong, Vinh
Pastor-Pérez, Lluís
Bien, Tanja
Mualem, Loay
Niepert, Mathias
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Generative modeling of physical systems, such as molecules, requires learning distributions that are invariant under global symmetries, such as rotations in three-dimensional space. Equivariant diffusion and flow matching models can incorporate such invariances effectively, even when trained on a non-invariant empirical distribution, but they typically rely on costly multi-step sampling. Recently, drifting models have emerged as an efficient alternative, enabling single-step generation and achieving state-of-the-art performance in generative modeling tasks. However, we show that drifting models face a symmetry-specific challenge, since an equivariant generator does not generally produce the same drifting field as the one obtained from the symmetrized target distribution. Addressing this issue would require expensive symmetrization of the empirical distribution. To avoid this cost, we propose SymDrift, a framework that makes the drifting field itself symmetry-aware. We introduce two complementary strategies: (i) a symmetrized drift in coordinate space based on optimal alignment, and (ii) a $G$-invariant embedding that removes symmetry ambiguity by construction. Empirically, SymDrift outperforms existing one-shot methods on standard benchmarks for conformer and transition state generation, while remaining competitive with significantly more expensive multi-step approaches. By enabling one-shot inference, SymDrift reduces computational overhead by up to 40$\times$ compared to existing baselines, making it promising for high-throughput applications such as virtual drug screening and large-scale reaction network exploration.
title SymDrift: One-Shot Generative Modeling under Symmetries
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.06140