Discrete Diffusion Models: Novel Analysis and New Sampler Guarantees

Abstract: Discrete diffusion models have recently gained significant prominence in applications involving natural language and graph data. A key factor influencing their effectiveness is the efficiency of discretized samplers. Among these, $\tau$-leaping samplers have become particularly popular due to their empirical success. However, existing theoretical analyses of $\tau$-leaping often rely on somewhat restrictive and difficult-to-verify regularity assumptions, and their convergence bounds contain quadratic dependence on the vocabulary size. In this work, we introduce a new analytical approach for discrete diffusion models that removes the need for such assumptions. For the standard $\tau$-leaping method, we establish convergence guarantees in KL divergence that scale linearly with vocabulary size, improving upon prior results with quadratic dependence. Our approach is also more broadly applicable: it provides the first convergence guarantees for other widely used samplers, including the Euler method and Tweedie $\tau$-leaping. Central to our approach is a novel technique based on differential inequalities, offering a more flexible alternative to the traditional Girsanov change-of-measure methods. This technique may also be of independent interest for the analysis of other stochastic processes.