Diffusion Models & Score-Based Generative Models Reading List

Curated by Mouhssine Rifaki | Stanford Electrical Engineering | Last updated August 2026

Core papers on diffusion and score-based generative models, from denoising diffusion probabilistic models to SDE and consistency formulations.

Diffusion Models & Score-Based Generative Models: 10 key papers

1. Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models
   Ho et al. arXiv 2020.
2. Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models
   Song et al. arXiv 2020.
3. Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis
   Dhariwal and Nichol. arXiv 2021.
4. Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance
   Ho and Salimans. arXiv 2022.
5. High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models
   Rombach et al. arXiv 2021.
6. Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models
   Karras et al. arXiv 2022.
7. Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models
   Nichol and Dhariwal. arXiv 2021.
8. Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics
   Sohl-Dickstein et al. arXiv 2015.
9. Progressive Distillation for Fast Sampling of Diffusion Models
   Salimans and Ho. arXiv 2022.
10. Consistency Models
    Song et al. arXiv 2023.

Related reading lists

• Score-Based Generative Modeling
• Diffusion Models for Decision Making
• Generative Modeling
• Flow Matching & Schrödinger Bridges
• Code Generation & Program Synthesis with RL
• Unsupervised Environment Design
• Bayesian Deep Learning
• Meta-Reinforcement Learning