Discrete Diffusion for Large Graph Generation via Structural Candidate Restriction

Yassin Mohamadi, Zeno Geradts, Marcel Worring

Synthesizing realistic graphs at scale is vital when the graphs of interest are large and real-world samples are limited or access-sensitive. Diffusion-based generators have recently driven much of the progress, offering high modeling capacity, but most such methods have quadratic computational complexity and are hence restricted to small-scale networks, currently up to 3k nodes. Existing non-quadratic methods remain limited by memorization issues and a trade-off between scalability and generation quality. Our goal is to generate large graphs whose structural statistics --- e.g., degree distribution, clustering, and path length --- faithfully reflect those of real-world sparse graphs, without resorting to memorizing the training data. We introduce a discrete graph diffusion model that restricts training to a structurally motivated subset of node pairs --- observed edges and their wedge non-edges --- reducing training complexity below quadratic in the number of nodes. To keep the noisy graph informative throughout both the forward and reverse trajectories, we design a three-class absorbing forward process governed by a \emph{degree-aware, floored} cosine noise schedule: unlike a…