Topological Flow Matching
Publication
In ICLR 2026
Authors
Kacper Wyrwal, Ismail Ilkan Ceylan, Alexander Tong
Date
May 7, 2026
Abstract
Flow matching is a powerful generative modeling framework, valued for its simplicity and strong empirical performance. However, its standard formulation treats signals on structured spaces—such as fMRI data on brain graphs—as points in Euclidean space, overlooking the rich topological features of their domains. To address this, we introduce topological flow matching, a topology-aware generalization of flow matching. We interpret flow matching as a framework for solving a degenerate Schrödinger bridge problem and inject topological information by augmenting the reference process with a Laplacian-derived drift. This principled modification captures the structure of the underlying domain while preserving the desirable properties of flow matching: a stable, simulation-free objective and deterministic sample paths. As a result, our framework serves as a plug-and-play replacement for standard flow matching. We demonstrate its effectiveness on diverse structured datasets, including brain fMRIs, ocean currents, seismic events, and traffic flows.