Non-Abelian KPZ State-Space Coupling
Implementation & benchmark of arXiv:2608.13666 — Far-from-equilibrium scaling of non-abelian Goldstone modes
Source paper: Far-from-equilibrium scaling of non-abelian Goldstone modes arXiv:2608.13666 ⓘ · analyzed Sep 1, 2026
AI-generated research hypothesis, automatically tested. Not peer-reviewed.
Idea description
Augment a sequence model with a scalar phase-like latent field and several coupled channel fields, then add a KPZ-style nonlinear gradient drift between neighboring sequence positions. The coupling is made dimension-aware: it can remain active in effectively one- or two-dimensional latent dynamics, but is annealed toward zero in higher-dimensional dynamics where the paper predicts that weak nonequilibrium perturbations become irrelevant.
Formulas
Mathematical statement
Let h_a(x,t) be latent channel a, with a from 1 to N, over sequence coordinate x and dynamical time t, and let phi(x,t) be a scalar phase field. The reduced dynamics contain diffusion, a KPZ nonlinear gradient term, chronon-channel coupling, and noise: partial_t h_a = nu_a partial_x^2 h_a + lambda_a (partial_x h_a)^2 / 2 + sum_b kappa_ab F_b(partial_x phi, partial_x h) + xi_a. Here nu_a is a positive diffusion coefficient, lambda_a is a nonlinear drift coefficient, kappa_ab is a cross-sector coupling, F_b is a chosen bilinear or antisymmetric coupling function, and xi_a is noise or stochastic gradient variation. The dimensionless coupling g = lambda^2 sigma_h^2 / nu^3 has one-loop flow d g / d log b = (2-d) g + c_N g^2 + O(g^3), where b is the coarse-graining factor, d is effective dimension, sigma_h^2 is latent variance, and c_N is positive. Therefore the coupling grows for d below 2, grows logarithmically at d equal to 2, and decays for d above 2.
Implementation notes
1. Integration point: implement the mechanism inside a residual SSM or RNN. Let the hidden tensor be h with shape batch by sequence length by channel count, and add a scalar phase channel phi. Use periodic or reflective finite differences along the sequence axis: D h at position l equals one half of h at l plus one minus h at l minus one, while D2 h equals h at l plus one minus two h at l plus h at l minus one. Add the residual drift h <- h + delta_t times [nu D2 h + lambda times (D h) elementwise squared divided by two + K F(D phi, D h)]. 2. Pseudocode: compute D h and D2 h; compute the nonlinear drift; update h; pass the result through the normal SSM transition; every 100 optimizer steps estimate latent covariance, variance, and effective dimension; rescale lambda according to s(d) = 1 for d less than or equal to 2 and exp(-beta times (d minus 2)) otherwise. Enforce an explicit stability limit delta_t times nu times the spectral norm of the finite-difference Laplacian below one half. 3. Taken from the paper: the relevance law and the critical dimension d equal to 2. Estimated in code: nu, lambda, K, latent variance, effective dimension, and c_N. Estimate d using the participation ratio of the local latent covariance, d_eff = (trace C)^2 divided by trace(C squared). 4. First experiment: compare a GRU or small SSM with and without this drift on Copy Memory and sequential MNIST, using equal parameter budgets. Sweep initial g and latent width. Coarse-grain hidden trajectories by averaging adjacent positions at scales b equal to 2, 4, 8, and 16, then fit g(b). The prediction is g(b) proportional to b raised to the power 2 minus d_eff below dimension two, logarithmic growth near dimension two, and decay above dimension two. Require the measured log-log slope to agree with 2 minus d_eff within 20 percent.
Verification
This idea has not been verified yet.
Verification happens in two stages: Stage 1 — a mechanism check on a toy system confirms the claimed mathematical phenomenon reproduces; Stage 2 — a benchmark implements the idea on a real (small) neural network task and compares it against a tuned baseline over 8 paired seeds with a permutation test.
Artifacts
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