# CAR-Flow: Condition-Aware Reparameterization Aligns Source and Target for Better Flow Matching

Source: [CAR-Flow: Condition-Aware Reparameterization Aligns Source and Target for Better Flow Matching](<https://www.sota2.com/research/paper/68fa7b821e209131cea88c91>)

Collection index: [llms.txt](<https://www.sota2.com/research/llms.txt>)

Data updated: 2025-10-28T13:57:21.961Z

Authors: Chen Chen, Pengsheng Guo, Liangchen Song, Jiasen Lu, Rui Qian, Xinze Wang, Tsu-Jui Fu, Wei Liu, Yinfei Yang, Alex Schwing

Published: 2025-09-23T17:59:31.000Z

## Abstract

Conditional generative modeling aims to learn a conditional data distribution from samples containing data-condition pairs. For this, diffusion and flow-based methods have attained compelling results. These methods use a learned (flow) model to transport an initial standard Gaussian noise that ignores the condition to the conditional data distribution. The model is hence required to learn both mass transport and conditional injection. To ease the demand on the model, we propose Condition-Aware Reparameterization for Flow Matching (CAR-Flow) -- a lightweight, learned shift that conditions the source, the target, or both distributions. By relocating these distributions, CAR-Flow shortens the probability path the model must learn, leading to faster training in practice. On low-dimensional synthetic data, we visualize and quantify the effects of CAR-Flow. On higher-dimensional natural image data (ImageNet-256), equipping SiT-XL/2 with CAR-Flow reduces FID from 2.07 to 1.68, while introducing less than 0.6% additional parameters.

## Recorded benchmark results

A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage.

## Original sources and implementation

[Original paper](<https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.19300>)

[PDF](<https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.19300.pdf>)
