Diffusion models, which convert noise into new data instances by learning to reverse a Markov diffusion process, have become a cornerstone in contemporary generative modeling. While their practical power has now been widely recognized, the theoretical underpinnings remain far from mature. In this work, we develop a suite of non-asymptotic theory towards understanding the data generation process of diffusion models in discrete time, assuming access to reliable estimates of the (Stein) score functions. For a popular deterministic sampler (based on the probability flow ODE), we establish a convergence rate proportional to $1/T$ (with $T$ the total number of steps), improving upon past results; for another mainstream stochastic sampler (i.e., a type of the denoising diffusion probabilistic model (DDPM)), we derive a convergence rate proportional to $1/\sqrt{T}$, matching the state-of-the-art theory. Our theory imposes only minimal assumptions on the target data distribution (e.g., no smoothness assumption is imposed), and is developed based on an elementary yet versatile non-asymptotic approach without resorting to toolboxes for SDEs and ODEs. Further, we design two accelerated variants, improving the convergence to $1/T^2$ for the ODE-based sampler and $1/T$ for the DDPM-type sampler, which might be of independent theoretical and empirical interest.

该研究发展了一套用于理解离散时间下扩散模型数据生成过程的非渐进理论，对于一种常见的确定性采样方法，该理论建立了一个与步骤总数$T$成反比例的收敛速率，对于另一种主流随机采样方法，该理论得出了一个与步骤总数$T$的平方根成反比例的收敛速率，同时设计了两种加速变体，进一步提高了收敛速度。

基于扩散的生成模型的更快非渐进收敛探索