Generalized Wasserstein Flow Matching: Transport Plans, Everywhere, All at Once

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Piening, Moritz, Duong, Richard, Steidl, Gabriele
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866914546086576128
author Piening, Moritz
Duong, Richard
Steidl, Gabriele
author_facet Piening, Moritz
Duong, Richard
Steidl, Gabriele
contents Flow matching has recently emerged as a flexible and efficient framework for generative modelling by learning deterministic transport dynamics between probability measures. In this work, we extend flow matching to the space of probability measures over probability measures, introducing a Wasserstein-on-Wasserstein (WoW) formulation. Leveraging the nested Wasserstein geometry, we show that measures over transport plans naturally induce velocity fields that realize metameasure flows. This yields a principled generalization of Wasserstein flow matching via coupled outer and inner transport plans. To address the substantial computational cost of WoW transport, we propose scalable approximations based on sliced and linear Wasserstein distances, enabling efficient training while promoting numerically stable, near-straight trajectories. Our framework unifies and extends existing approaches to point cloud and set generation, providing a practical and theoretically grounded method for generative modelling in WoW spaces.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_08424
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Generalized Wasserstein Flow Matching: Transport Plans, Everywhere, All at Once
Piening, Moritz
Duong, Richard
Steidl, Gabriele
Machine Learning
Optimization and Control
Probability
Flow matching has recently emerged as a flexible and efficient framework for generative modelling by learning deterministic transport dynamics between probability measures. In this work, we extend flow matching to the space of probability measures over probability measures, introducing a Wasserstein-on-Wasserstein (WoW) formulation. Leveraging the nested Wasserstein geometry, we show that measures over transport plans naturally induce velocity fields that realize metameasure flows. This yields a principled generalization of Wasserstein flow matching via coupled outer and inner transport plans. To address the substantial computational cost of WoW transport, we propose scalable approximations based on sliced and linear Wasserstein distances, enabling efficient training while promoting numerically stable, near-straight trajectories. Our framework unifies and extends existing approaches to point cloud and set generation, providing a practical and theoretically grounded method for generative modelling in WoW spaces.
title Generalized Wasserstein Flow Matching: Transport Plans, Everywhere, All at Once
topic Machine Learning
Optimization and Control
Probability
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.08424