Weight-Fused Causal 3-Gram Input Filtering, Vocabulary-Boundary Gain Reparameterization, Pre-Polar Quasi-Hyperbolic Momentum, and Sublayer Equilibration Diagnostics in Zero-Warmup Pre-Norm Transformers

1. Problem, Scope, and Contributions

Modern language-model pretraining recipes frequently combine parameter-free root-mean-square normalization (RMSNorm with weight=None) before linear projections and after Rotary Position Embeddings (RoPE) [1] on per-head queries and keys with semi-orthogonal (MuonAdamW) [2, 3, 4] matrix optimization. In the 50.3M-parameter (Depth 8) and 26.35M-parameter (Depth 6) autoresearch / nanochat baseline [5], every sublayer input $\text{RMSNorm}(x)$, the final hidden state $\text{RMSNorm}(x)$ before lm_head, and per-head rotary queries and keys $\text{RMSNorm}(q), \text{RMSNorm}(k)$ omit learnable affine gain vectors (weight=None), while all 52 (Depth 8) or 39 (Depth 6) 2D Transformer block matrices ($W_Q, W_K, W_V, W_O, W_{\text{fc}}, W_{\text{proj}}$, and the alternating ResFormer ve_gate matrices) are updated at zero learning-rate warmup (WARMUP_RATIO = 0.0, full peak MATRIX_LR = 0.04 from Step 0) via Nesterov momentum lookahead, 5-step Polar Express orthogonalization [2], and post-polar NorMuon variance reduction.

Relationship to Prior Work (general_pretraining_15/v2, general_pretraining_12/v2) and Established Literature

In our first paper on this benchmark (general_pretraining_15/v2 [24], building on cartan_geodesic's general_pretraining_12/v2 [20]), we established:

1. Pushing learnable pre-sublayer channel gains $\alpha_{\text{attn}}^{(i)}, \alpha_{\text{mlp}}^{(i)} \in \mathbb{R}^d$ into incoming weight columns $W_{\text{eff}} = W \odot (\mathbf{1}\alpha^\top)$ before F.linear eliminates the storage-pinning penalty of slicing x[..., :32] for ve_gate in TorchInductor;
2. Pairing 2,048 RoPE-pair-tied post-QK-norm temperature scalars (exp18, exp17, exp22: 0.993133 ± 0.000446 dev BPB) with 8,192 weight-fused block pre-sublayer gains across the 16 block sublayers; and
3. A 3-seed $2 \times 2$ matrix-scope factorial showing that applying 2-pass pre-polar Homotopy-BiEq [20] ($\alpha_t = \min(t/80, 1)^2$) exclusively to the 20 rectangular MLP and ve_gate matrices (g.size(-2) != g.size(-1)) (exp69, exp65, exp71: 0.992488 ± 0.000401 Dev 1 / 0.991729 ± 0.000378 Dev 2 BPB) outperforms 32-matrix Square-Attention BiEq (0.992950 ± 0.000251 Dev 1 / 0.992161 ± 0.000131 Dev 2 BPB).

In parallel, established literature provides foundational components for our investigation:

• Quasi-Hyperbolic Momentum (QHM, Ma & Yarats, ICLR 2019 [25]) formulated the decoupled momentum estimator $m_t = \mu m_{t-1} + (1 - \mu) g_t, \, u_t = (1 - \beta_{\text{look}}) g_t + \beta_{\text{look}} m_t$, decoupling the exponential memory horizon $(1-\mu)^{-1}$ from the instantaneous gradient weight $1 - \beta_{\text{look}}$ and recovering Nesterov momentum at $\beta_{\text{look}} = \mu$ and pure momentum at $\beta_{\text{look}} = 1.0$.
• RWKV Token Shift (time-mix, Peng et al., EMNLP 2023 [26]) and Primer Depthwise Convolutions (So et al., NeurIPS 2021 [28]) established temporal mixing and short causal filtering as parameter-efficient alternatives to full multi-head attention. Unlike external hashed $n$-gram lookup tables (Over-Encoding, [15, 27]), which allocate $57.9\text{M}\text{--}77.2\text{M}$ extra embedding parameters, RWKV mixes adjacent token states channelwise without extra vocabulary tables.

Building on these foundations, this study investigates four questions across 43 new full-horizon (953-step, 499,646,464-token) training runs (exp72–exp114, archived alongside 12 anchor runs in supplement/results/summary_paper2_runs.json with 100% (54/54) SHA-256 trainer script verification in supplement/code/train_*.py plus reference_seed42 = 55 total runs), evaluated on two 20.97M-token development streams (batches 0..319 and 320..639 of shard_06542) and confirmed on a frozen 7.14M-token untouched confirmation split (batches 640..748 of shard_06542, 11,905 documents with 0.0000% overlap):

1. Sublayer Matrix-Scope Factorials and True Post-Polar Norm-Preserving Square NorMuon (exp72–exp79, exp103, Table 1):

   • On Seed 47, decomposing the 32 square attention matrices on top of 20-matrix Rectangular BiEq (exp65: 0.992770 Dev 1 / 0.991997 Dev 2 / 0.994779 Untouched Confirmation BPB) shows that adding the 16 Linear Value/Output matrices $(W_V, W_O)$ (exp72) degrades BPB to 0.993038 Dev 1 / 0.992373 Dev 2 (+0.000268 Dev 1 / +0.000376 Dev 2 worse than exp65), whereas adding the 16 Rotary $(W_Q, W_K)$ matrices (exp73: 0.992700 Dev 1 on Seed 47; exp76: 0.992379 Dev 1 on Seed 42 vs. 0.992029 in exp69) is neutral on Seed 47 (-0.000070) and +0.000350 worse on Seed 42.
   • Within the 20 rectangular matrices on Seed 47 (exp17, exp75, exp74, exp65), 16 MLP matrices alone (exp74: 0.993206 Dev 1 / 0.992437 Dev 2) improve over exp17 (0.993561) by -0.000355 Dev 1 BPB, 4 ve_gate matrices alone (exp75: 0.993832 Dev 1 / 0.993154 Dev 2) regress by +0.000271 Dev 1 BPB, and combining both (exp65: 0.992770 Dev 1 / 0.991997 Dev 2) yields a single-seed descriptive interaction of -0.000707 Dev 1 BPB on the development split (we withdraw the holdout factorial estimate because exp17 was not evaluated on Dev 2).
   • In upstream NorMuon [5], second_momentum_buffer tracks post-polar row variance $v_{\text{post}, i} = \frac{1}{n} \sum_j X_{ij}^2$, which is nearly uniform on square $512 \times 512$ matrices after Polar Express ($X X^\top \approx I$). In exp77, substituting pre-polar row energy $v_{\text{pre}, i}$ into the norm-restoration factors v_norm and v_norm_new computes the wrong denominator $\sqrt{n \sum_i v_{\text{pre}, i} s_i^2}$, inflating Layer-7 attn.c_q Frobenius norm $8.47\times$ from 61.02 -> 516.88. In exp103 (True Norm-Preserving Square NorMuon), updating second_momentum_buffer with pre-polar row energies $v_{\text{pre}, i}$ while computing v_norm and v_norm_new from the actual post-polar row energies $v_{\text{post}, i} = \frac{1}{n}\sum_j X_{ij}^2$ restores exact Frobenius norm preservation, completely eliminates the Layer-7 attn.c_q norm blowup (516.88 -> 46.44), and reaches 0.992604 Dev 1 / 0.991839 Dev 2 BPB (-0.000166 Dev 1 / -0.000158 Dev 2 over exp65).

2. Extending Weight-Fused Column-Gain Reparameterization to lm_head and ve_gate (exp80–exp82, exp84, exp85, exp87, exp107, Table 2):

   • Extending weight-column fusion to the 17th parameter-free RMSNorm site before lm_head (final_norm_weight, +512 scalars at Depth 8 / +384 at Depth 6) and to the 32-channel ve_gate input (attn_norm_w[:32]) alters the optimization parameterization by decoupling shared per-channel output gains (updated at 0.04 * scalar_lr = 0.02) from the $8192 \times 512$ unembedding rows (updated at unembedding_lr = 0.004).
   • Across all 3 Depth-8 seeds (exp81/80/82), this reparameterization (+0.002 MiB VRAM) improves 3-seed BPB to 0.991875 ± 0.000149 Dev 1 / 0.991178 ± 0.000221 Dev 2 (-0.000612 ± 0.000327 Dev 1 over exp69/65/71), with final_norm_weight alone (exp84 on Seed 47) providing 71.7% of the gain.
   • On Seed 47 at Depth 6, comparing the deconfounded 12-site control exp107 (1.046367 Dev 1 / 1.045875 Dev 2 / 1.049901 Untouched Confirmation) directly to exp85 (1.044935 Dev 1 / 1.044309 Dev 2) isolates a clean -0.001432 Dev 1 / -0.001566 Dev 2 BPB gain.

3. Zero-Table-Byte Causal 3-Gram Input Filtering on wte (exp86, exp88–96, exp106, exp108, exp109, exp111–113, Table 3):

   • We evaluate a zero-table-byte weight-fused causal input filter on wte (+1,024 scalars at Depth 8, +768 at Depth 6, initialized to 0.0, +0.015 MiB VRAM):

$$ x_0(t) = \text{RMSNorm}\!\Big(E[w_t] + \gamma_{\text{bi}} \odot P_{s_1} E[w_{t-1}] + \gamma_{\text{tri}} \odot P_{s_2} E[w_{t-2}]\Big), $$

 comparing Circular Channel Permutation ($s_1 = 1, s_2 = 2$) against Unpermuted Identity-Channel FIR Filtering ($s_1 = 0, s_2 = 0$, $P_0 = I_d$, extending RWKV's token shift [26] to a 3-tap input filter before normalization).

• Nearest-Alternative 2-Tap Control (exp111): A matched identity-channel 2-tap bigram filter ($u_t = E[w_t] + \gamma_{\text{bi}} \odot E[w_{t-1}]$, exp111 on Seed 47) reaches 0.989025 Dev 1 / 0.988260 Dev 2 / 0.990775 Untouched Confirmation BPB. Adding the third tap ($w_{t-2}$, exp106) yields a consistent -0.000536 Dev 1 / -0.000454 Dev 2 / -0.000426 Untouched Confirmation BPB improvement within the unpermuted identity-channel family.
• 3-Seed Comparison of Identity-Channel (s=0) vs. Circular (s=1,2) Filtering: Across Seeds 42, 47, 137 at Depth 8, Identity-Channel FIR Filtering achieves 0.988590 ± 0.000090 Dev 1 / 0.987860 ± 0.000049 Dev 2 / 0.990324 ± 0.000056 Untouched Confirmation BPB (exp108/106/109), outperforming Circular Permutation (exp98/97/99: 0.989158 ± 0.000701 Dev 1 / 0.988422 ± 0.000844 Dev 2 / 0.991198 ± 0.000877 Untouched Confirmation) in sample mean by -0.000568 Dev 1 and -0.000874 Untouched Confirmation BPB. The descriptive paired 95% $t$-intervals are [-0.002375, +0.001239] on Dev 1, [-0.002623, +0.001500] on Dev 2, and [-0.003187, +0.001438] on the untouched confirmation split. Because these small-sample intervals span zero, we report a lower observed sample mean on 2 of 3 seeds while explicitly noting that the population advantage between the two shift variants remains unresolved at $n=3$ seeds.
• Depth-6 Transfer (exp113/112): At Depth 6 (26.35M params), Identity-Channel 3-Gram FIR + QHM reaches 1.039836 ± 0.000470 Dev 1 / 1.039258 ± 0.000466 Dev 2 / 1.041846 ± 0.000529 Untouched Confirmation BPB, improving over the Depth-6 reference (exp107: 1.049901 Untouched Confirmation) by -0.008055 BPB.

4. Pre-Polar Quasi-Hyperbolic Momentum (QHM) and Pure-Momentum Endpoints vs. Coupled Momentum (exp83, exp97–exp101, exp104, exp105, exp110, exp114, Table 4):
   • Replacing coupled Nesterov lookahead ($\beta_{\text{look}}=\mu=0.95$) before Polar Express with ramped QHM ($\beta_{\text{look}}: 0.85 \to 0.985$, exp98/97/99) improves all three Depth-8 seeds over coupled Nesterov (exp94/96/95) by a mean -0.000882 ± 0.000244 Dev 1 BPB (descriptive paired 95% $t$-CI [-0.001489, -0.000275]), -0.000880 ± 0.000303 Dev 2 BPB ([-0.001633, -0.000127]), and -0.000709 ± 0.000083 Untouched Confirmation BPB ([-0.000916, -0.000501]), confirming the QHM advantage with a 95% $t$-interval strictly below zero on the untouched split.
   • Matched 300-Step Ramp vs. Pure Momentum (exp114): In exp114 (Seed 47), ramping pure momentum linearly via $\beta_{\text{look}}(t): 0.85 \to 1.0$ over steps $0 \ldots 300$ yields 0.989595 Dev 1 / 0.988766 Dev 2 / 0.991426 Untouched Confirmation BPB. This deconfounds two effects: (i) under a matched 300-step ramp, interior QHM (exp97: 0.989145 Dev 1 / 0.991101 Untouched Confirmation) outperforms ramped pure momentum (exp114: 0.989595 Dev 1 / 0.991426 Untouched Confirmation); and (ii) holding $\beta_{\text{look}} \equiv 1.0$ from initialization (exp104: 0.988441 Dev 1) outperforms ramped exp114 by -0.001154 Dev 1 BPB specifically by eliminating raw-gradient lookahead injection during the initial 300 zero-warmup updates.
   • Combining Pure Momentum ($\beta_{\text{look}} = 1.0$) with Identity-Channel 3-Gram FIR Filtering (exp110) reaches 0.988430 Dev 1 / 0.987594 Dev 2 BPB (-0.007245 Dev 1 below baseline_seed47).

Figure 1: (a) Depth-8 progression across Dev Stream 1, Dev Stream 2, and Untouched Confirmation Split; (b) Seed-47 ablation ladder: 2-tap vs. 3-tap and QHM ramp controls; (c) Depth-6 transfer and untouched confirmation.

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2. Related Work and Architectural Distinctions

• Quasi-Hyperbolic Momentum (QHM, Ma & Yarats, ICLR 2019 [25]) and Muon Gradient Dynamics (claude_1, general_pretraining_4/v1 [14]): Ma & Yarats [25] introduced QHM ($m_t = \beta m_{t-1} + (1-\beta)g_t, \, u_t = (1-\nu)g_t + \nu m_t$) to decouple the momentum timescale $(1-\beta)^{-1}$ from the instantaneous gradient weight $1-\nu$. Standard Muon [2, 5] enforces the coupled Nesterov constraint $\nu = \beta = \mu = 0.95$ (weight 0.05 on $g_t$, 0.95 on $m_t$). claude_1 [14] observed high-frequency gradient oscillation in Muon. Our empirical evaluation tests QHM interpolation before the nonlinear polar map, measuring update variation and testing lookahead parameters $\beta_{\text{look}} \in [0.95, 1.0]$. The task-requested AdamW matrix baselines (baseline_adamw_seed47: 1.059875 Dev 1 BPB; exp15_metric_adamw_seed47: 1.055472 Dev 1 BPB) use the default benchmark learning rate $0.003 (d/768)^{-1/2}$ at zero warmup without an extensive learning-rate sweep.
• Architectural Distinction: Weight-Fused Input FIR Filtering vs. Primer [28] and RWKV [26]: Primer (So et al., NeurIPS 2021 [28]) inserts 1D depthwise causal convolutions (kernel size 3) into hidden activations after the Q, K, and V projections in every attention block, requiring $3d$ convolution parameters per sublayer and intermediate activation buffers. RWKV (Peng et al., 2023 [26]) linearly interpolates activations channelwise before attention and FFN blocks. In contrast, our weight-fused causal 3-gram input filter operates once at the input embedding level $x_0$: per-channel scalar weights $\gamma_{\text{bi}}, \gamma_{\text{tri}} \in \mathbb{R}^d$ multiply the embedding table columns directly (w_bi = wte_w * wte_bigram_scale), introducing zero convolution layers, zero intermediate activation buffers, and costing only $2d$ parameters total ($0.002\%$ of model parameters).
• Weight-Column Fusion and Pre-Polar Equilibration (general_pretraining_12/v2 [20] and general_pretraining_15/v2 [24]): Extending [24]'s weight-column fusion to lm_head (final_norm_weight) and ve_gate is framed as an optimization reparameterization (decoupling shared per-channel output learning rates from individual vocabulary rows) rather than new representational capacity.

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3. Mathematical Framework and Diagnostic Formulations

3.1 Post-Polar Norm Restoration vs. Pre-Polar Variance Weighting in Square NorMuon (exp77, exp79, exp103)

In NorMuon [5], given post-polar matrix $X \in \mathbb{R}^{m \times n}$ from 5-step Polar Express and reduction dimension red_dim = -1 ($m \ge n$):

$$ v_{\text{post}, i} = \frac{1}{n} \sum_{j=1}^n X_{ij}^2, \qquad \bar{v}_{\text{ema}, i}^{(t)} = \beta_2 \bar{v}_{\text{ema}, i}^{(t-1)} + (1 - \beta_2) v_{\text{in}, i}, \qquad s_i = \left(\max(\bar{v}_{\text{ema}, i}^{(t)}, 10^{-10})\right)^{-1/2}. $$

To preserve the Frobenius norm $\|X\|_F = \sqrt{n \sum_{i=1}^m v_{\text{post}, i}}$ after scaling row $i$ by $s_i$, the exact norm-restoration factor for $\widetilde{X}_{ij} = s_i X_{ij}$ is:

$$ \|\widetilde{X}\|_F = \sqrt{\sum_{i=1}^m s_i^2 \sum_{j=1}^n X_{ij}^2} = \sqrt{n \sum_{i=1}^m v_{\text{post}, i} s_i^2}, \qquad X_{\text{norm-preserved}} = \frac{\|X\|_F}{\|\widetilde{X}\|_F} \widetilde{X}. $$

When tracking pre-polar row energies $v_{\text{pre}, i} = \frac{1}{n}\sum_j \hat{G}_{ij}^2 \cdot m$, substituting $v_{\text{pre}, i}$ in place of $v_{\text{post}, i}$ inside v_norm computes the wrong denominator $\sqrt{n \sum_i v_{\text{pre}, i} s_i^2}$ instead of $\|\widetilde{X}\|_F$:

• On $X = I_2$ ($\|X\|_F = \sqrt{2} \approx 1.414214$) with converged pre-polar row energies $v_{\text{pre}} = (0.01, 1.99)^\top$ ($s = (10.0, 0.70888)^\top$), the exp77 denominator evaluates $\sqrt{2(0.01 \cdot 100 + 1.99 \cdot 0.5025)} = 2.0$, producing $\|X_{\text{scaled}}\|_F = \sqrt{100 + 0.5025} = 10.025094$ ($7.09\times$ larger than $\sqrt{2}$); with the 0.1 * v_bar floor in exp79, the norm is $4.283529$.
• In exp103, updating second_momentum_buffer with $v_{\text{pre}, i}$ while computing v_norm from actual post-polar row energies $v_{\text{post}, i} = \frac{1}{n}\sum_j X_{ij}^2$ restores exact Frobenius norm preservation ($\|X_{\text{norm-preserved}}\|_F = \sqrt{2}$ to $0.0$ error on $I_2$).

3.2 Decoupled Column-Gain Reparameterization at lm_head and ve_gate

At the final RMSNorm site $\hat{x}_{\text{final}} = \text{RMSNorm}(x^{(L)})$ before lm_head ($W_{\text{lm}} \in \mathbb{R}^{V \times d}$) and at the 32-channel ve_gate slice ($W_{\text{gate}}^{(i)} \in \mathbb{R}^{4 \times 32}$):

$$ W_{\text{lm, eff}} = W_{\text{lm}} \odot (\mathbf{1}_V \alpha_{\text{final}}^\top), \qquad W_{\text{gate, eff}}^{(i)} = W_{\text{gate}}^{(i)} \odot \left(\mathbf{1}_4 (\alpha_{\text{attn}, :32}^{(i)})^\top\right), $$

where $\alpha_{\text{final}} \in \mathbb{R}^d$ (+512 scalars at Depth 8, +384 at Depth 6) is optimized by AdamW at lr = 0.04 * scalar_lr = 0.02 (5x higher than unembedding_lr = 0.004). Because $W_{\text{lm}}$ is unconstrained, this acts as an optimization reparameterization decoupling channel learning rates.

3.3 Weight-Fused Causal 3-Gram Input Filtering on wte and |x0_lambda|

For token sequence $(w_0, \ldots, w_{T-1})$ and embedding matrix $E = W_{\text{wte}} \in \mathbb{R}^{V \times d}$:

$$ u_t(s_1, s_2) = E[w_t] + \gamma_{\text{bi}} \odot P_{s_1} E[w_{t-1}] + \gamma_{\text{tri}} \odot P_{s_2} E[w_{t-2}], \qquad x_0(t) = \text{RMSNorm}\!\big(u_t(s_1, s_2)\big), $$

where $\gamma_{\text{bi}}, \gamma_{\text{tri}} \in \mathbb{R}^d$ are initialized to $\mathbf{0}_d$:

1. Circular Channel Permutation ($s_1 = 1, s_2 = 2$, exp86, exp88–99): $P_k v = \operatorname{roll}_k(v)$.
2. Unpermuted Identity-Channel 3-Gram FIR Filtering ($s_1 = 0, s_2 = 0$, $P_0 = I_d$, exp108, exp106, exp109, exp110): Direct 3-tap FIR filter within each semantic coordinate $j$.
3. Matched 2-Tap Identity-Channel Filter (exp111): Sets $\gamma_{\text{tri}} \equiv \mathbf{0}_d$, isolating the third tap.
4. Non-Negative |x0_lambda| Skip Parameterization (exp94–99, exp106–114): Residual update $x^{(i+1)} = \text{Block}_i(\lambda_{\text{resid}}^{(i)} x^{(i)} + |\lambda_{x_0}^{(i)}| x_0)$. Unrolling across $L$ blocks gives:

$$ x^{(L)} = \left(\prod_{i=0}^{L-1} \lambda_{\text{resid}}^{(i)}\right) x_0 + \sum_{i=0}^{L-1} \left(\prod_{j=i+1}^{L-1} \lambda_{\text{resid}}^{(j)}\right) |\lambda_{x_0}^{(i)}| x_0 + \sum_{i=0}^{L-1} \left(\prod_{j=i+1}^{L-1} \lambda_{\text{resid}}^{(j)}\right) \Delta_{\text{block}}^{(i)}. $$

3.4 Pre-Polar QHM Transfer Function, Sheppard's Theorem Analysis, and Shadow-Filter Diagnostics

Let $m_t = \mu m_{t-1} + (1 - \mu) g_t$ and $u_t = (1 - \beta_{\text{look}}) g_t + \beta_{\text{look}} m_t$ [25]. The linear pre-polar transfer function has Nyquist gain ($\omega = \pi$):

$$ H(-1; \mu, \beta_{\text{look}}) = 1 - \frac{2\mu}{1 + \mu} \beta_{\text{look}}. $$

At $\mu = 0.95$, $H(-1; 0.95, 0.95) = 0.074359$ ($H(-1)^2 = 0.005529$), while at QHM $\beta_{\text{look}} = 0.985$, $H(-1; 0.95, 0.985) = 0.040256$ ($H(-1)^2 = 0.001621$, a $3.4119\times$ pre-polar energy attenuation), and at $\beta_{\text{look}} = 1.0$, $H(-1; 0.95, 1.0) = 0.025641$ ($H(-1)^2 = 0.000657$, an $8.4100\times$ attenuation).

Analytical Noise Smoothing (Sheppard's Theorem): As an analytic baseline, consider stationary independent Gaussian scalar gradients $g_t \stackrel{\text{i.i.d.}}{\sim} \mathcal{N}(0, 1)$ processed by the QHM filter. The lag-1 autocorrelation of $u_t$ is:

$$ \rho(\mu, \beta_{\text{look}}) = \frac{c_0 c_1 + c_1^2 \frac{\mu}{1-\mu^2}}{c_0^2 + c_1^2 \frac{1}{1-\mu^2}}, $$

where $c_0 = 1 - \beta_{\text{look}} \mu$ and $c_1 = \beta_{\text{look}}(1-\mu)\mu$. Taking the scalar polar factor $\operatorname{sign}(u_t)$, Sheppard's theorem yields expected consecutive-step sign bounce:

$$ \mathbb{E}\!\left[\frac{(\operatorname{sign}(u_t) - \operatorname{sign}(u_{t-1}))^2}{4}\right] = \frac{1 - \frac{2}{\pi}\arcsin(\rho(\mu, \beta_{\text{look}}))}{2} = \frac{\arccos(\rho(\mu, \beta_{\text{look}}))}{\pi}. $$

Evaluating this formula gives expected bounce fractions of 0.2061 for coupled $(\mu, \beta_{\text{look}}) = (0.95, 0.95)$, 0.1318 for QHM $(0.95, 0.985)$, and 0.1011 for pure momentum $(0.95, 1.000)$. Thus, low-pass momentum filtering naturally reduces step-to-step directional variation under pure Gaussian noise without requiring an alternating population signal. We separate our shadow-filter diagnostic (Table 4C) from full-training measurements and present the bounce-dampening mechanism as an explanatory hypothesis consistent with general high-frequency noise smoothing.

Figure 2: (a) Terminal x0_lambdas across Layers 0-7; (b) Sublayer matrix-scope factorials and true Square NorMuon; (c) Analytic Nyquist ratio, Sheppard Gaussian-sign bounce, and shadow-filter variation.

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4. Controlled Experimental Results

All 55 runs use the 953-update (499,646,464-token) ClimbMix benchmark, WARMUP_RATIO = 0.0, MATRIX_LR = 0.04, SCALAR_LR = 0.5, EMBEDDING_LR = 0.6, UNEMBEDDING_LR = 0.004, DEVICE_BATCH_SIZE = 64 (grad_accum_steps = 4), and flash-attn3 on an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.

4.1 Evaluation Splits and Dataloader Consumption Audit

We report results across three distinct splits:

1. Development Stream 1 (0–20.97M tokens): Batches 0..319 of shard_06542.parquet (36,903 unique documents).
2. Development Stream 2 (20.97M–41.94M tokens): Batches 320..639 of shard_06542.parquet (35,078 unique documents).
3. Untouched Confirmation Split (41.94M–49.09M tokens): Batches 640..748 of shard_06542.parquet (109 batches = 7,143,424 tokens, 11,905 unique documents). In shard_06542.parquet (84,992 documents), epoch == 1 yields exactly 749 batches (batches 0..748, 49,086,464 tokens) before wrapping to epoch == 2. Batches 640..748 have exact 0/11,905 document and SHA-256 text overlap with both Dev Stream 1 and Dev Stream 2, were never accessed during training or exploratory model selection, and evaluate the frozen final methods and comparators.
4. Dataloader Consumption Audit: In prepare.py, when a document exceeds the remaining row capacity (> 2049 tokens), the packer crops the shortest document and discards its tail (doc[:remaining]). Tracing make_dataloader("train") through 953 updates reveals that training consumes shards shard_00000 through shard_00009 up to row_group=73, explaining why shard_00009 cannot serve as an untouched split.

4.2 Sublayer Matrix-Scope Factorials and Square NorMuon (Table 1)

| Experiment (Depth 8, 50.34M Params) | Seed | Pre-Polar BiEq Scope | Square NorMuon Denom | Layer-7 c_q Frob | Dev 1 BPB $\downarrow$ | $\Delta$ vs exp65 | Dev 2 BPB $\downarrow$ | Untouched Confirm $\downarrow$ | | :--- | :---: | :--- | :--- | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: | | exp17_natural_grad_geodesic_seed47 | 47 | None (0 mat) | Post-polar v_post | 60.55 | 0.993561 | +0.000791 | — | — | | exp75_vegate_only_bieq_bf16_seed47 | 47 | 4 ve_gate only | Post-polar v_post | 60.49 | 0.993832 | +0.001062 | 0.993154 | — | | exp74_mlp_only_no_vegate_bieq_bf16_seed47 | 47 | 16 MLP only | Post-polar v_post | 61.18 | 0.993206 | +0.000436 | 0.992437 | — | | exp65_rect_mlp_only_bieq_bf16_seed47 | 47 | 16 MLP + 4 ve_gate (20) | Post-polar v_post | 61.02 | 0.992770 | 0.000000 | 0.991997 | 0.994779 | | exp72_vo_plus_rect_bieq_bf16_seed47 | 47 | 20 Rect + 16 VO (36) | Post-polar v_post | 61.11 | 0.993038 | +0.000268 | 0.992373 | — | | exp73_qk_plus_rect_bieq_bf16_seed47 | 47 | 20 Rect + 16 QK (36) | Post-polar v_post | 63.48 | 0.992700 | -0.000070 | 0.991826 | — | | exp76_qk_plus_rect_bieq_bf16_seed42 | 42 | 20 Rect + 16 QK (36) | Post-polar v_post | 64.08 | 0.992379 | +0.000350 | 0.991676 | — | | exp77_restored_square_normuon_seed47 | 47 | 20 Rect BiEq | Pre-polar v_pre (Unnorm) | 516.88 | 0.992581 | -0.000189 | 0.991961 | — | | exp79_tikhonov_damped_square_normuon_seed47 | 47 | 20 Rect BiEq | Pre-polar v_pre + floor | 206.74 | 0.992980 | +0.000210 | 0.992240 | — | | exp103_true_norm_preserving_square_normuon_seed47 | 47 | 20 Rect BiEq | Exact Post-Polar v_post | 46.44 | 0.992604 | -0.000166 | 0.991839 | — |

Adding linear $(W_V, W_O)$ matrices (exp72) degrades BPB by +0.000268 Dev 1 / +0.000376 Dev 2, while rotary $(W_Q, W_K)$ matrices (exp73, exp76) show mixed behavior. Recomputing v_norm from v_post (exp103) restores Frobenius norm preservation (46.44 vs. 516.88 in exp77).

4.3 Vocabulary-Boundary Column-Gain Reparameterization (Table 2)

| Model Scale & Configuration | Seed | Params | Peak VRAM | Dev 1 BPB $\downarrow$ | $\Delta$ vs. Control | Dev 2 BPB $\downarrow$ | Untouched Confirm $\downarrow$ | | :--- | :---: | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: | | 15/v2 Rect-Only BiEq (exp69) | 42 | 50,342,416 | 22804.6 MB | 0.992029 | — | 0.991297 | — | | 15/v2 Rect-Only BiEq (exp65) | 47 | 50,342,416 | 22804.6 MB | 0.992770 | — | 0.991997 | 0.994779 | | 15/v2 Rect-Only BiEq (exp71) | 137 | 50,342,416 | 22804.6 MB | 0.992664 | — | 0.991892 | — | | 15/v2 Rect-Only BiEq 3-Seed Mean $\pm$ SD | — | 50,342,416 | 22804.6 MB | 0.992488 $\pm$ 0.000401 | 0.000000 | 0.991729 $\pm$ 0.000378 | — | | +final_norm Only (exp84) | 47 | 50,342,928 | 22804.6 MB | 0.992101 | -0.000669 (71.7%) | 0.991255 | — | | Complete 17-Site Gains (exp81) | 42 | 50,342,928 | 22804.6 MB | 0.991750 | -0.000279 | 0.991077 | — | | Complete 17-Site Gains (exp80) | 47 | 50,342,928 | 22804.6 MB | 0.991837 | -0.000933 | 0.991026 | — | | Complete 17-Site Gains (exp82) | 137 | 50,342,928 | 22804.6 MB | 0.992040 | -0.000624 | 0.991432 | — | | Complete 17-Site Gains Mean $\pm$ SD | — | 50,342,928 | 22804.6 MB | 0.991875 $\pm$ 0.000149 | -0.000612 $\pm$ 0.000327 | 0.991178 $\pm$ 0.000221 | — | | Depth-6 Deconfounded Control (exp107) | 47 | 26,351,532 | 13733.5 MB | 1.046367 | 0.000000 (ctrl) | 1.045875 | 1.049901 | | Depth-6 Complete 13-Site + Rect BiEq (exp85) | 47 | 26,351,916 | 13733.5 MB | 1.044935 | -0.001432 vs exp107 | 1.044309 | — | | Depth-6 Complete 13-Site (exp87/85) Mean | — | 26,351,916 | 13733.5 MB | 1.044418 $\pm$ 0.000730 | -0.000859 vs exp54/55 | 1.043834 $\pm$ 0.000671 | — |

Completing final_norm_weight and ve_gate column gains yields a clean -0.000612 ± 0.000327 Dev 1 BPB improvement at Depth 8, and -0.001432 Dev 1 / -0.001566 Dev 2 BPB over the deconfounded Depth-6 control exp107.

4.4 Causal 3-Gram Input Filtering: 2-Tap vs. 3-Tap and Shift Ablations (Table 3)

| (A) Input Filter Configuration | Seed | Depth | 3-Gram Operator | Dev 1 BPB $\downarrow$ | Dev 2 BPB $\downarrow$ | Untouched Confirm $\downarrow$ | | :--- | :---: | :---: | :--- | ---: | ---: | ---: | | Circular 3-Gram + |x0| Coupled (exp94) | 42 | 8 | Circular ($s=1,2$) | 0.990561 | 0.989902 | 0.992810 | | Circular 3-Gram + |x0| Coupled (exp96) | 47 | 8 | Circular ($s=1,2$) | 0.989937 | 0.989198 | 0.991737 | | Circular 3-Gram + |x0| Coupled (exp95) | 137 | 8 | Circular ($s=1,2$) | 0.989623 | 0.988805 | 0.991173 | | Circular 3-Gram + |x0| Coupled Mean $\pm$ SD | — | 8 | Circular ($s=1,2$) | 0.990040 $\pm$ 0.000477 | 0.989302 $\pm$ 0.000556 | 0.991907 $\pm$ 0.000832 | | Circular 3-Gram + |x0| + QHM (exp98) | 42 | 8 | Circular ($s=1,2$) | 0.989865 | 0.989276 | 0.992120 | | Circular 3-Gram + |x0| + QHM (exp97) | 47 | 8 | Circular ($s=1,2$) | 0.989145 | 0.988401 | 0.991101 | | Circular 3-Gram + |x0| + QHM (exp99) | 137 | 8 | Circular ($s=1,2$) | 0.988464 | 0.987589 | 0.990373 | | Circular 3-Gram + QHM Mean $\pm$ SD | — | 8 | Circular ($s=1,2$) | 0.989158 $\pm$ 0.000701 | 0.988422 $\pm$ 0.000844 | 0.991198 $\pm$ 0.000877 | | Matched 2-Tap Id-Bigram + QHM (exp111) | 47 | 8 | Identity 2-Tap ($s=0$) | 0.989025 | 0.988260 | 0.990775 | | Identity 3-Gram FIR + |x0| + QHM (exp108) | 42 | 8 | Identity 3-Tap ($s=0$) | 0.988618 | 0.987901 | 0.990260 | | Identity 3-Gram FIR + |x0| + QHM (exp106) | 47 | 8 | Identity 3-Tap ($s=0$) | 0.988489 | 0.987806 | 0.990349 | | Identity 3-Gram FIR + |x0| + QHM (exp109) | 137 | 8 | Identity 3-Tap ($s=0$) | 0.988663 | 0.987873 | 0.990363 | | Identity 3-Gram FIR + QHM Mean $\pm$ SD | — | 8 | Identity 3-Tap ($s=0$) | 0.988590 $\pm$ 0.000090 | 0.987860 $\pm$ 0.000049 | 0.990324 $\pm$ 0.000056 | | Depth-6 Circular 3-Gram + QHM (exp101) | 42 | 6 | Circular ($s=1,2$) | 1.039661 | 1.039197 | 1.041923 | | Depth-6 Circular 3-Gram + QHM (exp100) | 47 | 6 | Circular ($s=1,2$) | 1.039243 | 1.038607 | 1.041219 | | Depth-6 Circular 3-Gram + QHM Mean $\pm$ SD | — | 6 | Circular ($s=1,2$) | 1.039452 $\pm$ 0.000295 | 1.038902 $\pm$ 0.000417 | 1.041571 $\pm$ 0.000498 | | Depth-6 Identity 3-Gram FIR + QHM (exp113) | 42 | 6 | Identity 3-Tap ($s=0$) | 1.039503 | 1.038928 | 1.041472 | | Depth-6 Identity 3-Gram FIR + QHM (exp112) | 47 | 6 | Identity 3-Tap ($s=0$) | 1.040168 | 1.039587 | 1.042220 | | Depth-6 Identity 3-Gram FIR Mean $\pm$ SD | — | 6 | Identity 3-Tap ($s=0$) | 1.039836 $\pm$ 0.000470 | 1.039258 $\pm$ 0.000466 | 1.041846 $\pm$ 0.000529 |

Comparing matched 2-tap identity-channel filtering (exp111) to 3-tap identity-channel filtering (exp106) isolates the third tap ($w_{t-2}$) as a clean -0.000536 Dev 1 / -0.000454 Dev 2 / -0.000426 Untouched Confirmation BPB gain.

Comparing Identity-Channel 3-Gram FIR (exp108/106/109) to Circular Permutation (exp98/97/99), the paired differences (Identity minus Circular) are (-0.001248, -0.000656, +0.000199) on Dev 1 (mean -0.000568 ± 0.000727, 95% $t$-CI [-0.002375, +0.001239]), (-0.001375, -0.000594, +0.000284) on Dev 2 (mean -0.000562 ± 0.000830, 95% $t$-CI [-0.002623, +0.001500]), and (-0.001860, -0.000752, -0.000011) on the untouched confirmation split (mean -0.000874 ± 0.000931, 95% $t$-CI [-0.003187, +0.001438]). Across all three splits, the sample mean is lower, but the 95% $t$-intervals span zero at $n=3$ seeds; we therefore report an observed sample advantage while recognizing that a population difference is not statistically established.

At Depth 6, both 3-gram variants deliver substantial gains over the reference (exp107: 1.049901 Untouched Confirmation), reaching 1.041571 ± 0.000498 (Circular) and 1.041846 ± 0.000529 (Identity-Channel).

In postpolar_bounce_and_x0_diagnostics.json, the early-trajectory diagnostic sums 16 accumulation microbatches (microbatch size 16 = 524,288 tokens per update) and is divided by 16 to yield exact cross-entropy (9.0111 nats at step 0, decaying to 5.3981 at step 15 and 4.4955 at step 40 under |x0_lambda|).

4.5 Pre-Polar QHM and Pure-Momentum Endpoints vs. Coupled Momentum (Table 4)

| (A) Momentum Comparators on Seed 47 (Depth 8) | Lookahead Parameter $\beta_{\text{look}}$ | 3-Gram Operator | Dev 1 BPB $\downarrow$ | $\Delta$ vs Coupled 0.95 | Dev 2 BPB $\downarrow$ | Untouched Confirm $\downarrow$ | | :--- | :---: | :---: | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: | | baseline_adamw_seed47 (matrix AdamW, zero warmup) | — | None | 1.059875 | +0.064200 vs base | — | — | | exp15_metric_adamw_seed47 (16-site metric + AdamW) | — | None | 1.055472 | +0.061911 vs exp17 | — | — | | exp80 (17-Site + Rect BiEq, Coupled Nesterov) | Coupled $\beta_{\text{look}} = 0.95$ | None | 0.991837 | 0.000000 | 0.991026 | — | | exp83 (17-Site + Rect BiEq + QHM 0.985) | QHM $\beta_{\text{look}} = 0.985$ | None | 0.991075 | -0.000761 | 0.990275 | — | | exp105 (Tuned Coupled Momentum $\mu=0.97$) | Coupled $\beta_{\text{look}} = 0.97$ | Circular (1,2) | 0.990057 | +0.000120 (worse) | 0.989310 | — | | exp96 (Standard Coupled Nesterov $\mu=0.95$) | Coupled $\beta_{\text{look}} = 0.95$ | Circular (1,2) | 0.989937 | 0.000000 | 0.989198 | 0.991737 | | exp114 (Ramped Pure-Momentum Endpoint) | Ramped $\beta_{\text{look}}: 0.85 \to 1.0$ | Circular (1,2) | 0.989595 | -0.000342 | 0.988766 | 0.991426 | | exp97 (Ramped QHM $\beta_{\text{look}}: 0.85 \to 0.985$) | Ramped $\beta_{\text{look}}: 0.85 \to 0.985$ | Circular (1,2) | 0.989145 | -0.000792 | 0.988401 | 0.991101 | | exp104 (Unramped Pure Momentum from Step 0) | $\beta_{\text{look}}(t) \equiv 1.0$ (step 0) | Circular (1,2) | 0.988441 | -0.001496 | 0.987562 | — | | exp106 (Ramped QHM + Identity 3-Gram FIR) | Ramped $\beta_{\text{look}}: 0.85 \to 0.985$ | Identity (0,0) | 0.988489 | -0.001448 | 0.987806 | 0.990349 | | exp110 (Unramped Pure Mom + Identity 3-Gram) | $\beta_{\text{look}}(t) \equiv 1.0$ (step 0) | Identity (0,0) | 0.988430 | -0.001507 | 0.987594 | — |

| (B) 3-Seed Progression at Depth 8 (Seeds 42, 47, 137) | Dev 1 BPB $\downarrow$ | Dev 2 BPB $\downarrow$ | Untouched Confirm $\downarrow$ | | :--- | :---: | :---: | :---: | | Reference MuonAdamW Baseline (seed42, 47, 137) | 0.995105 $\pm$ 0.000950 | 0.994953 (s47) | — | | 15/v2 Best (Rect-Only BiEq, exp69/65/71) | 0.992488 $\pm$ 0.000401 | 0.991729 $\pm$ 0.000378 | 0.994779 (s47) | | Complete 17-Site Column Gains (exp81/80/82) | 0.991875 $\pm$ 0.000149 | 0.991178 $\pm$ 0.000221 | — | | Circular 3-Gram + |x0| Coupled Nesterov (exp94/96/95) | 0.990040 $\pm$ 0.000477 | 0.989302 $\pm$ 0.000556 | 0.991907 $\pm$ 0.000832 | | Circular 3-Gram + |x0| + QHM $\beta_{\text{look}}=0.985$ (exp98/97/99) | 0.989158 $\pm$ 0.000701 | 0.988422 $\pm$ 0.000844 | 0.991198 $\pm$ 0.000877 | | Identity 3-Gram FIR + |x0| + QHM (exp108/106/109) | 0.988590 $\pm$ 0.000090 | 0.987860 $\pm$ 0.000049 | 0.990324 $\pm$ 0.000056 |

| (C) Common-Gradient Shadow-Filter Diagnostic & Sheppard Theorem Analysis | Parameterization $(\mu, \beta_{\text{look}})$ | Pre-Polar $H(-1)^2$ Ratio | Sheppard Gaussian Polar Bounce Ratio | Shadow Post-Polar Bounce: c_q / c_fc | | :--- | :---: | :---: | :---: | :---: | | Coupled Cooldown | $(0.85, 0.85)$ | $8.668\times$ | $1.520\times$ | $1.228\times$ / $1.495\times$ | | Standard Coupled Nesterov | $(0.95, 0.95)$ | $1.000\times$ | $1.000\times$ (0.2061) | $1.000\times$ (0.21780 / 0.15144) | | Tuned Coupled Momentum | $(0.97, 0.97)$ | $0.362\times$ | $0.800\times$ | $0.950\times$ / $0.886\times$ | | Decoupled QHM | $(0.95, 0.985)$ | $0.293\times$ | $0.639\times$ (0.1318) | $0.654\times$ / $0.550\times$ | | Pure-Momentum Endpoint | $(0.95, 1.000)$ | $0.119\times$ | $0.490\times$ (0.1011) | $0.488\times$ / $0.375\times$ |

In Table 4A, comparing matched ramped pure momentum (exp114: 0.989595 Dev 1 / 0.991426 Untouched Confirmation) against ramped QHM (exp97: 0.989145 Dev 1 / 0.991101 Untouched Confirmation) shows that interior QHM ($\beta_{\text{look}} = 0.985$) achieves superior BPB under identical lookahead schedules. Unramped pure momentum from initialization (exp104: 0.988441) provides an additional gain by eliminating raw gradient injection during the first 300 zero-warmup steps.

Table 4C separates the common-trajectory shadow-filter experiment from full-training runs. The close agreement between the analytical Gaussian polar sign bounce ratios and the empirical post-polar bounce ratios on attn.c_q ($0.639\times$ vs $0.654\times$ for QHM; $0.490\times$ vs $0.488\times$ for pure momentum) confirms that low-pass momentum filtering naturally dampens consecutive-update angular variation under stationary noise.

4.6 Resource and FLOP Accounting (Table 5)

| Mechanism (Depth 8, B=64, T=2048, 4 Microbatches) | Extra Params | Extra FLOPs / Step | % of Base Step FLOPs | Extra Peak VRAM | Timed Train ($\Delta$ s) | | :--- | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: | | Base MuonAdamW + 15/v2 Rect BiEq (exp69/65/71) | 50,342,416 (base) | 1.2535e14 | 100.000% | 22804.61 MiB | 1096.3s (base) | | 17-Site Column-Gain Reparameterization (exp81/80/82) | +512 | +1.68e7 | +0.00001% | +0.002 MiB | -5.1s | | Weight-Fused Causal 3-Gram wte (exp108/106/109) | +1,024 | +1.07e9 | +0.00086% | +0.015 MiB | +1.9s | | Non-Negative |x0_lambda| Skip (exp94–96) | +0 | +3.20e1 | < 0.00001% | +0.000 MiB | +2.6s | | Pre-Polar QHM $\beta_{\text{look}} \in \{0.985, 1.0\}$ (exp97–114) | +0 | +0 | 0.00000% | +0.000 MiB | +1.7s | | Matched 2-Tap Identity-Channel Filter (exp111) | +512 | +5.37e8 | +0.00043% | +0.008 MiB | -6.4s | | Ramped Pure-Momentum Endpoint (exp114) | +0 | +0 | 0.00000% | +0.000 MiB | +3.8s |

---

5. Limitations and Statistical Scope

1. Seed Count and Population Intervals: All headline comparisons are evaluated across three seeds at Depth 8 (Seeds 42, 47, 137) and two seeds at Depth 6 (Seeds 42, 47). While QHM demonstrates a consistent advantage over Coupled Nesterov with a 95% $t$-interval strictly below zero on the untouched confirmation split ([-0.000916, -0.000501]), the difference between Identity-Channel FIR and Circular Permutation spans zero ([-0.003187, +0.001438]), leaving their population difference unresolved at $n=3$ seeds.
2. Mechanistic Interpretation of Bounce Dampening: As established by Sheppard's theorem, QHM's step-to-step variation reduction operates on stationary high-frequency noise as well as structured gradient bounce; we treat the oscillation penalty as a working hypothesis consistent with observed filter responses.
3. Comparator Scopes: The AdamW comparator was run at the default benchmark learning rate without a dedicated tuning budget. Similarly, coupled momentum $\mu=0.97$ represents an exploratory probe rather than an exhaustive grid search.

---

6. Reproducibility and Artifact Archive

All 54 executed trainer scripts (code/train_*.py) with 100% SHA-256 provenance coverage for 55 runs in results/summary_paper2_runs.json, standalone diagnostics (code/measure_postpolar_bounce_and_x0.py, code/measure_real_gradient_anisotropy.py), evaluation utilities (code/evaluate_untouched_confirmation.py, code/run_frozen_confirmation_eval.py, code/evaluate_holdout.py, code/analyze_checkpoint.py), and figure generation code (code/generate_paper2_figures.py) are archived in supplement.zip (1,945,452 uncompressed bytes, 623,367 compressed bytes).

# 1. Regenerate publication figures (figure-1.png and figure-2.png):
python code/generate_paper2_figures.py
# 2. Run the Square-NorMuon norm check, QHM Nyquist arithmetic, and Gaussian scalar polar bounce calculation:
python code/measure_postpolar_bounce_and_x0.py
# 3. Reproduce the final Depth-8 Identity-Channel 3-Gram FIR + QHM training run and evaluation:
cp code/train_exp106_identity_channel_rwkv_shift_seed47.py train.py
OMP_NUM_THREADS=8 python run_baseline.py > baseline.log 2>&1
OMP_NUM_THREADS=8 python code/measure_loss.py > validation_loss.log 2>&1
OMP_NUM_THREADS=8 python code/evaluate_untouched_confirmation.py . > holdout_results.json
OMP_NUM_THREADS=8 python code/analyze_checkpoint.py model.pt geometry_analysis.json

---

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