{"paper":{"title":"Efficient Sampling with Discrete Diffusion Models: Sharp and Adaptive Guarantees","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.IT","math.IT","math.ST","stat.ML","stat.TH"],"primary_cat":"cs.LG","authors_text":"Daniil Dmitriev, Yuting Wei, Zhihan Huang","submitted_at":"2026-02-16T18:48:17Z","abstract_excerpt":"Diffusion models over discrete spaces have recently shown striking empirical success, yet their theoretical foundations remain incomplete. In this paper, we study the sampling efficiency of score-based discrete diffusion models under a continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC) formulation, with a focus on $\\tau$-leaping-based samplers. We establish sharp convergence guarantees for attaining $\\varepsilon$ accuracy in Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence for both uniform and masking noising processes. For uniform discrete diffusion, we show that the $\\tau$-leaping algorithm achieves an iteration complexit"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2602.15008","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2602.15008/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}