A priori regularity of the reverse heat flow and dimension-dependent complexity of higher-order diffusion samplers

Abstract

We establish arbitrary-order a priori regularity estimates for the reverse heat flow in the Ornstein--Uhlenbeck setting, that is, for the probability-flow ODE of score-based diffusion models. For compactly supported, possibly singular targets satisfying a dimension-uniform doubling condition on supporting-cap masses, we bound the iterated material derivatives of the flow and their first spatial derivatives pointwise, with constants independent of the dimension $d$ and explicit in time and support radius. The proof rests on two ingredients: a spatially uniform bound on normal-direction posterior fluctuations, which is the only point where the geometry of the target enters, and a centered posterior-moment normal form closed under material differentiation. This algebraic structure, together with a weighted regularity calculus, yields quantitative bounds at every order, including the mixed space--time directional derivatives required by Runge--Kutta stages. As an application, for exact-score sampling stopped at forward time $\delta>0$, order-$p$ Taylor and explicit Runge--Kutta schemes reach accuracy $\varepsilon$ in $\widetilde O(d^{1/p}\varepsilon^{-1/p})$ steps in total variation, and the Taylor scheme in $\widetilde O(d^{1/(2p)}\varepsilon^{-1/p})$ steps in $W_2$.