arXiv · 2026

Conditional Mean Flows: Few-Step Densities for Simulation-Based Inference

Jonas Arruda, Jan Hasenauer, Stefan T. Radev

We develop conditional mean flows for fast posterior and likelihood approximation in simulation-based inference, combining few-step sampling with tractable density evaluation. With a single inference step, the method matches the estimation error of standard flow matching while making downstream MCMC sampling about 200 times faster.

simulation-based inference
amortized inference
flow matching
density estimation
MCMC