Papers › Large-Scale Wasserstein Gradient Flows

Large-Scale Wasserstein Gradient Flows

1 Jun 2021NeurIPS 2021 12arXiv:2106.00736archive 2025-07-28

Petr Mokrov, Alexander Korotin, Lingxiao Li, Aude Genevay, Justin Solomon, Evgeny Burnaev

Wasserstein gradient flows provide a powerful means of understanding and solving many diffusion equations. Specifically, Fokker-Planck equations, which model the diffusion of probability measures, can be understood as gradient descent over entropy functionals in Wasserstein space. This equivalence, introduced by Jordan, Kinderlehrer and Otto, inspired the so-called JKO scheme to approximate these diffusion processes via an implicit discretization of the gradient flow in Wasserstein space. Solving the optimization problem associated to each JKO step, however, presents serious computational challenges. We introduce a scalable method to approximate Wasserstein gradient flows, targeted to machine learning applications. Our approach relies on input-convex neural networks (ICNNs) to discretize the JKO steps, which can be optimized by stochastic gradient descent. Unlike previous work, our method does not require domain discretization or particle simulation. As a result, we can sample from the measure at each time step of the diffusion and compute its probability density. We demonstrate our algorithm's performance by computing diffusions following the Fokker-Planck equation and apply it to unnormalized density sampling as well as nonlinear filtering.

PaperPDFConference PDFCodeCode Syntology ran

In Syntology Open this paper in Syntology's Atlas, the map of the papers in Syntology's graph and their citations.

For agents, Syntology's MCP tool lists every function and class Syntology harvested from this paper and whether it ran (how to connect): get_harvested_code_for_paper(arxiv_id="2106.00736")

Code

Syntology Ran 3 of 3 code samples harvested from 1 repository linked to this paper; 0 have no recorded run. Of those that ran: 3 ran · our draft was wrong.

By repository: official repository: 3 samples from 1 repository, 3 ran. The run record, sample by sample. “Ran” means executed on a synthesized input, not that the code is correct or reproduces the paper.

PetrMokrov/Large-Scale-Wasserstein-Gradient-Flows officialmentioned in papermentioned on GitHubpytorch report
iamalexkorotin/Wasserstein2Barycenters mentioned on GitHubpytorchMIT report
iamalexkorotin/Wasserstein2Benchmark mentioned on GitHubpytorch report

Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.

Code Syntology ran Syntology

3 samples harvested; 3 ran; 0 honoured the contract we drafted; 0 have no recorded run. Read from Syntology's graph 2026-09-24; that is when this build read the record, not when the samples ran.

3ran · our draft was wrong

Licence: 0 of the 3 samples are pointer only, meaning Syntology does not serve that copy's text. This page shows no code text for any sample; each one links to its file in the repository.

Harvested from PetrMokrov/Large-Scale-Wasserstein-Gradient-Flows. “Ran” means the sample executed on a synthesized input. It does not mean the output is correct, and nothing here reproduces the paper's results. “Honoured” and “violated” refer to a contract Syntology drafted from the code itself; “our draft was wrong” and “fixture could not drive it” are failures of Syntology's instrument, not of the code.

Each sample ends with its code_sha256, Syntology's identity for that exact code. An agent fetches the stored sample with Syntology's MCP tool get_code(code_sha256="…") (how to connect); click an identity to copy that call.

Repository labels, per sample. official repository: The archive marks this repository official for the paper. named in the paper: The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official. community (archive-listed): In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper. found in paper text by Syntology: Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted. community: Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested. Samples from a repository marked official are listed first. Licence labels name the repository's licence as recorded at harvest. “Pointer only” means Syntology does not serve that copy's text, for one of four reasons: no licence file was found; the licence was not identified; the licence is recorded as permissive but that copy's record is not marked cleared; or the licence is outside the permissive list Syntology serves text under (MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD and similar). Some licences outside that list permit redistribution, such as WTFPL, and GPL-3.0 under its conditions; they are simply not on the list. Hover a licence label for the reason. File links open the file on GitHub at the default branch, which may have changed since the harvest.

extract_exp_ns PetrMokrov/Large-Scale-Wasserstein-Gradient-Flows/script.py official repository ran · our draft was wrong MIT (permissive) · c506fa4e8b8fccec · report
extract_method PetrMokrov/Large-Scale-Wasserstein-Gradient-Flows/script.py official repository ran · our draft was wrong MIT (permissive) · a11f707d494e7d87 · report
extract_verbose PetrMokrov/Large-Scale-Wasserstein-Gradient-Flows/script.py official repository ran · our draft was wrong MIT (permissive) · c528ab9d6897d3fb · report

Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28

No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.

Methods

Diffusion

Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections