Foundations of Schr\"odinger Bridges for Generative Modeling

TL;DR

This paper develops the mathematical foundations of Schr"odinger bridges, unifying various generative modeling approaches by framing them as optimal stochastic paths with minimal entropy deviations.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive theoretical framework connecting Schr"odinger bridges to modern generative models, including new methods for constructing and computing these bridges.

Findings

Unified perspective on diffusion, score-based, and flow models

Mathematical toolkit for constructing Schr"odinger bridges

Connections to optimal transport and stochastic control

Abstract

At the core of modern generative modeling frameworks, including diffusion models, score-based models, and flow matching, is the task of transforming a simple prior distribution into a complex target distribution through stochastic paths in probability space. Schr\"odinger bridges provide a unifying principle underlying these approaches, framing the problem as determining an optimal stochastic bridge between marginal distribution constraints with minimal-entropy deviations from a pre-defined reference process. This guide develops the mathematical foundations of the Schr\"odinger bridge problem, drawing on optimal transport, stochastic control, and path-space optimization, and focuses on its dynamic formulation with direct connections to modern generative modeling. We build a comprehensive toolkit for constructing Schr\"odinger bridges from first principles, and show how these constructions give rise to generalized and task-specific computational methods.