Wavelet Variance Equipartition as a Threshold for World-Model Quality and Quantum Kernel TN-Simulability
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 as a critical diagnostic, proposing optimal representations satisfy variance equipartition () -- mirroring Kolmogorov's inertial range. We establish as a sharp transition boundary for the classical simulability of amplitude-encoded quantum kernels. Using tensor-network theory, we prove latents with reside in an area-law phase admitting efficient classical emulation, while triggers a volume-law phase where the Matrix Product State bond dimension grows exponentially with qubit count . Analyzing pre-trained VideoMAE latents reveals a dichotomy: spatial tokens approach the equipartition limit (), but permutation-invariant feature channels exhibit unstructured disorder (). 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 . We confirm this numerically with a log-log slope of (), identifying a formidable shot-noise wall demanding a measurement budget of that constrains quantum machine learning scalability.
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}
}