Generalization Properties of Score-matching Diffusion Models for Intrinsically Low-dimensional Data

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2603.03700v1
• Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2026 03:59:02 GMT
• Title: Generalization Properties of Score-matching Diffusion Models for Intrinsically Low-dimensional Data
• Authors: Saptarshi Chakraborty, Quentin Berthet, Peter L. Bartlett,
• Abstract summary: We study the statistical convergence of score-based diffusion models for learning an unknown distribution $$ from finitely many samples.<n>Our results demonstrate that diffusion models naturally adapt to the intrinsic geometry of data.<n>Our theory conceptually bridges the analysis of diffusion models with that of GANs and the sharp minimax rates established in optimal transport.
• Score: 32.72306410557258
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Despite the remarkable empirical success of score-based diffusion models, their statistical guarantees remain underdeveloped. Existing analyses often provide pessimistic convergence rates that do not reflect the intrinsic low-dimensional structure common in real data, such as that arising in natural images. In this work, we study the statistical convergence of score-based diffusion models for learning an unknown distribution $μ$ from finitely many samples. Under mild regularity conditions on the forward diffusion process and the data distribution, we derive finite-sample error bounds on the learned generative distribution, measured in the Wasserstein-$p$ distance. Unlike prior results, our guarantees hold for all $p \ge 1$ and require only a finite-moment assumption on $μ$, without compact-support, manifold, or smooth-density conditions. Specifically, given $n$ i.i.d.\ samples from $μ$ with finite $q$-th moment and appropriately chosen network architectures, hyperparameters, and discretization schemes, we show that the expected Wasserstein-$p$ error between the learned distribution $\hatμ$ and $μ$ scales as $\mathbb{E}\, \mathbb{W}_p(\hatμ,μ) = \widetilde{O}\!\left(n^{-1 / d^\ast_{p,q}(μ)}\right),$ where $d^\ast_{p,q}(μ)$ is the $(p,q)$-Wasserstein dimension of $μ$. Our results demonstrate that diffusion models naturally adapt to the intrinsic geometry of data and mitigate the curse of dimensionality, since the convergence rate depends on $d^\ast_{p,q}(μ)$ rather than the ambient dimension. Moreover, our theory conceptually bridges the analysis of diffusion models with that of GANs and the sharp minimax rates established in optimal transport. The proposed $(p,q)$-Wasserstein dimension also extends classical Wasserstein dimension notions to distributions with unbounded support, which may be of independent theoretical interest.

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