Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Tao, Chenxi, Choi, Seung-Kyum
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.06680
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866910199212670976
author Tao, Chenxi
Choi, Seung-Kyum
author_facet Tao, Chenxi
Choi, Seung-Kyum
contents Flow matching generates data by integrating a learned velocity field, where the number of integration steps (NFE) directly determines inference cost. We analyze which properties of the velocity field govern integration error by decomposing the velocity Jacobian into its symmetric part S (strain rate) and antisymmetric part Omega (vorticity). We prove that strain and vorticity play different roles: strain controls exponential error amplification through the logarithmic norm, while vorticity contributes only linearly to the local truncation error. We further show that the optimal transport velocity field is irrotational and has zero material derivative, implying second-order Euler accuracy; for exact displacement interpolation, the associated Lagrangian particle dynamics are integrated exactly by Euler. Motivated by this analysis, we study weighted Jacobian regularization with strain weight alpha and vorticity weight beta. Experiments on 2D synthetic data confirm the main theoretical predictions, showing up to 2.7x lower integration error at NFE=5. Preliminary CIFAR-10 experiments show consistent trends, with a lightweight fine-tuning procedure improving FID by 14 percent at NFE=10 while preserving high-NFE quality.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_06680
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On the Role of Strain and Vorticity in Numerical Integration Error for Flow Matching
Tao, Chenxi
Choi, Seung-Kyum
Machine Learning
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Fluid Dynamics
Flow matching generates data by integrating a learned velocity field, where the number of integration steps (NFE) directly determines inference cost. We analyze which properties of the velocity field govern integration error by decomposing the velocity Jacobian into its symmetric part S (strain rate) and antisymmetric part Omega (vorticity). We prove that strain and vorticity play different roles: strain controls exponential error amplification through the logarithmic norm, while vorticity contributes only linearly to the local truncation error. We further show that the optimal transport velocity field is irrotational and has zero material derivative, implying second-order Euler accuracy; for exact displacement interpolation, the associated Lagrangian particle dynamics are integrated exactly by Euler. Motivated by this analysis, we study weighted Jacobian regularization with strain weight alpha and vorticity weight beta. Experiments on 2D synthetic data confirm the main theoretical predictions, showing up to 2.7x lower integration error at NFE=5. Preliminary CIFAR-10 experiments show consistent trends, with a lightweight fine-tuning procedure improving FID by 14 percent at NFE=10 while preserving high-NFE quality.
title On the Role of Strain and Vorticity in Numerical Integration Error for Flow Matching
topic Machine Learning
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Fluid Dynamics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.06680