English

Wavelet Variance Equipartition as a Threshold for World-Model Quality and Quantum Kernel TN-Simulability

Quantum Physics 2026-05-13 v1

Abstract

While world models learn compact representations of complex environments, they lack a physics-grounded metric to assess the structural fidelity of their latent spaces. We identify the wavelet scaling exponent α\alpha as a critical diagnostic, proposing optimal representations satisfy variance equipartition (α1/2\alpha \approx 1/2) -- mirroring Kolmogorov's inertial range. We establish α=1/2\alpha = 1/2 as a sharp transition boundary for the classical simulability of amplitude-encoded quantum kernels. Using tensor-network theory, we prove latents with α>1/2\alpha > 1/2 reside in an area-law phase admitting efficient classical emulation, while α<1/2\alpha < 1/2 triggers a volume-law phase where the Matrix Product State bond dimension χ\chi grows exponentially with qubit count nn. Analyzing pre-trained VideoMAE latents reveals a dichotomy: spatial tokens approach the equipartition limit (α0.423\alpha \approx 0.423), but permutation-invariant feature channels exhibit unstructured disorder (α0.123\alpha \approx -0.123). This forces real-world latents deep into the volume-law phase, providing a data-driven necessary condition for simulation hardness. Finally, we apply Weingarten calculus to derive the exact variance of the scrambled transition probability under a 2-design ensemble. We prove this variance scales strictly as \Var[X]=Θ(d2)\Var[X] = \Theta(d^{-2}). We confirm this numerically with a log-log slope of 1.881-1.881 (R2=0.999R^2 = 0.999), identifying a formidable shot-noise wall demanding a measurement budget of M=Ω(d2)M = \Omega(d^2) that constrains quantum machine learning scalability.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.11557,
  title  = {Wavelet Variance Equipartition as a Threshold for World-Model Quality and Quantum Kernel TN-Simulability},
  author = {Chon-Fai Kam and Xavier Cadet and Miloud Bessafi and Frederic Cadet},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.11557},
  year   = {2026}
}