Learning Graph Energies for Finite-Time Generation

Abstract

Energy-based models can represent distributions over discrete structures such as molecular graphs, but an energy that is accurate at equilibrium need not yield accurate samples when the sampler stops after a fixed number of steps. We introduce finite-horizon energy learning, which adapts the acceptance energy of a Metropolis--Hastings sampler to the distribution it returns after a prescribed number of steps, with initialization, proposals, and annealing schedule held fixed. For graph generation, a frozen pretrained model supplies initialization and proposals, and a learned energy governs acceptance. A training-only discriminator scores completed samples, and coupled continuations of the accepted and rejected branches of a proposal give an acceptance-gradient estimator that is unbiased for a fixed discriminator under stated conditions, without equilibrated negative samples or differentiation through discrete states. Generation uses the learned energy in the original single-trajectory sampler, without discriminator evaluations or reranking. On twelve pairwise binary targets with exactly evaluated terminal laws, learned energies have lower median terminal total variation than the equilibrium-correct energy in every tested short-horizon setting, and than its numerically tuned scalar multiple in most settings. On MOSES, a learned two-coefficient combination of pretrained Graph Energy Matching (GEM) potentials lowers FCD by 3.7--10.5\% relative to scale-calibrated GEM at matched sampling steps, with validity gains at the shortest budget and a sub-point validity trade-off at higher budgets.