Retimed Bellman Flows: Escaping the Impossible Triangle of Velocity Bootstrapping
Flow critics learn return distributions by transporting Gaussian noise to Bellman endpoints via continuous velocity fields. While velocity bootstrapping stabilizes training by querying a successor teacher, existing methods face a structural dilemma: on straight paths, no residual-free same-time affine mapping can preserve Gaussian initial noise while maintaining an unbiased target. To overcome this limitation, we introduce Retimed Bellman Flows (ReBF). ReBF queries the teacher critic at a dynamically shifted earlier flow time, aligning intermediate student and teacher trajectories. By combining this retimed clock with fresh, decoupled noise generation, ReBF constructs a provably condition...
| Authors | Boyang Xu, Shengzhe Chen, Hao Yan |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.LG |
| Published | 26 September 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 26 September 2026 |
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