发现扩散模型生成中对称性破缺与非局部性相变几乎同时发生。
Concurrence of Symmetry Breaking and Nonlocality Phase Transitions in Diffusion Models
- 通过分析生成轨迹，发现两种相变临界时间高度重合。
- 在关键时间窗口内，模型依赖全局去噪和条件信息。
- 为评估模型效率和设计更优采样方案提供新依据。
扩散模型在生成过程的关键时间窗内经历相变，有两种互补的临界诊断：对称性破缺视角认为该窗口是轨迹分叉至能量景观不同语义极小值的时刻；非局部性视角则认为是局部去噪失效的时刻。本文研究现代扩散变压器中这两种相变是否共现。通过评估生成轨迹的动力学与结果，我们观察到非局部性与对称性破缺的临界时间近乎同步。这是首个在实践中统一两种相变概念的工作，提供了何时何地模型依赖条件与全局去噪的具体诊断，使模型效率可被合理评估，并指导架构与采样策略的设计，避免不必要的计算。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Diffusion models undergo a phase transition in a critical time window during generation dynamics, with two complementary diagnoses of criticality. The symmetry breaking picture views the critical window as when trajectories bifurcate into different semantic minima of the energy landscape, whereas the nonlocality picture views the critical window as when local denoising fails. We study whether two notions of such phase transitions are concurrent in modern diffusion transformers. By evaluating the dynamics and outcomes of the generation trajectory, we observe a near-simultaneous occurrence of the non-locality and symmetry breaking critical times. Our work is the first to unify the two notions of phase transitions in practice: it provides a concrete diagnostic for when and why diffusion models rely on conditioning and global denoising, enabling principled evaluation of model efficiency and guiding the design of architectures and sampling schemes that avoid unnecessary computation.
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