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arxiv: 2605.16913 · v1 · pith:DMMM25JRnew · submitted 2026-05-16 · 📊 stat.ML · cond-mat.dis-nn· cond-mat.stat-mech· cs.LG· math.PR

A Fourier perspective on the learning dynamics of neural networks: from sample complexities to mechanistic insights

Fabiola Ricci , Claudia Merger , Sebastian Goldt This is my paper

Pith reviewed 2026-05-19 19:36 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification 📊 stat.ML cond-mat.dis-nncond-mat.stat-mechcs.LGmath.PR
keywords neural network trainingFourier analysissimplicity biasamplitude and phaseSGD sample complexitypower-law spectratranslation invarianceimage classification
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The pith

Online SGD cannot learn phase-only classification on isotropic high-dimensional inputs before order N cubed steps, but power-law spectra accelerate it substantially.

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The paper analyzes the simplicity bias of neural networks through a Fourier decomposition that separates amplitude information, tied to pixel correlations, from phase information, which encodes edges and higher-order structure. Experiments on image tasks show networks exploit amplitude before phase. A new synthetic model of translation-invariant data with controllable amplitudes and phases is introduced to make the dynamics tractable. Rigorous analysis proves that phase-based classification is hard for online SGD under isotropic inputs, requiring far more steps than amplitude-based tasks, while power-law spectra speed phase learning even when they add no classification benefit. Simulations with shallow and deep networks on textures, CIFAR100, and ImageNet confirm the same amplitude-to-phase progression.

Core claim

For isotropic and high-dimensional inputs, classification based on phase information alone is a genuinely hard task: online SGD cannot distinguish the structured inputs from noise within n much less than N cubed steps, but needs at least n much greater than N cubed log squared N steps. Power-law spectra can dramatically accelerate the speed of learning phase information, even if the spectra do not help with classification itself.

What carries the argument

A synthetic data model for translation-invariant inputs that separates control of amplitudes and phases while preserving tractability for SGD analysis.

If this is right

  • Networks trained on images first rely on amplitude information before exploiting phase information.
  • Power-law spectra accelerate phase learning even without improving final accuracy.
  • The same amplitude-before-phase progression appears in deep convolutional networks on CIFAR100 and ImageNet.
  • This amplitude-phase interaction explains how networks learn natural image distributions efficiently.

Where Pith is reading between the lines

These are editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

  • The hardness result may extend to other high-dimensional data with flat spectra.
  • Power-law acceleration could be tested on regression tasks or different architectures.
  • The model offers a way to study how translation invariance interacts with spectral properties during training.

Load-bearing premise

The synthetic data model for translation-invariant inputs captures the real interaction between amplitudes, phases, and SGD dynamics without artifacts that would change the hardness or acceleration results.

What would settle it

An experiment showing that online SGD succeeds at phase-only classification on high-dimensional isotropic inputs in substantially fewer than N cubed steps would disprove the hardness claim.

Figures

Figures reproduced from arXiv: 2605.16913 by Claudia Merger, Fabiola Ricci, Sebastian Goldt.

Figure 1
Figure 1. Figure 1: Learning phase vs amplitude information. a-b) Pictures of a bird and a snake from ImageNet. c-d) Fourier image reconstruction with phases φkk′ from the “bird” and amplitudes ρkk′ from the “snake” and vice versa. e) Phases of images from the “cotton” class of the ALOT texture dataset for patches of size 16 × 16 along the first Fourier mode in the x-direction. f) Uniform phase distribution. g) Performance of… view at source ↗
Figure 2
Figure 2. Figure 2: Performance of SGD in classifying isotropic inputs on the Fourier data model. (Left) We run online SGD applied to the correlation loss (1) with isotropic inputs drawn from the Fourier data model (3). SGD does not weakly recover the signal at linear ( ) or quadratic ( ) sample complexity, whereas it converges to the subspace spanned by the DFT phase vectors in the cubic ( ) regime. On the y-axes, we see the… view at source ↗
Figure 3
Figure 3. Figure 3: Shared principal subspace speeds up learning. a) Average squared Fourier amplitudes of image patches of “cotton” class from ALOT texture dataset, averaged over wave vectors of equal length |k| = q k 2 x + k 2 y , for patches of increasing size. b-d) Test losses of classifiers trained on distinguishing “cotton” vs. “lace” on original data ( ), data where all Fourier amplitudes of both classes have been set … view at source ↗
Figure 4
Figure 4. Figure 4: Performance of SGD in classifying non-isotropic inputs on the Fourier data model. (Left) Cartoon of the principal subspace of power-law-decaying inputs sampled from the Fourier data model (3), spanned by the DFT phase vectors (u, v) and a finite number of other principal components (u m, vm). (Middle) At first, online SGD quickly recovers the whole principal subspace, including the DFT phase vectors. Then,… view at source ↗
read the original abstract

Neural networks trained with gradient-based methods exhibit a strong simplicity bias: they learn simpler statistical features of their data before moving to more complex features. Previous analyses of this phenomenon have largely focused on settings with (quasi-)isotropic inputs. In this work, we study the simplicity bias from a Fourier perspective, which allows us to include two key features of natural images in the analysis: approximate translation-invariance and power-law spectra. We first show experimentally that simple neural networks trained on image classification tasks first rely on amplitude information -- related to pair-wise correlations between pixels -- before exploiting phase information, which encodes edges and higher-order correlations. In view of this, we introduce a synthetic data model for translation-invariant inputs that allows precise control over amplitudes and phases while remaining tractable. We rigorously establish that for isotropic and high-dimensional inputs, classification based on phase information alone is a genuinely hard task: online stochastic gradient descent (SGD) cannot distinguish the structured inputs from noise within $n \ll N^3$ steps, but needs at least $n \gg N^3 \log^2{N}$ steps. In contrast, we show both experimentally and theoretically that power-law spectra can dramatically accelerate the speed of learning phase information, even if the spectra do not help with classification. Simulations with two-layer networks trained on textures and with deep convolutional networks on ImageNet and CIFAR100 confirm this non-trivial interaction between amplitudes and phases, providing mechanistic insights into how deep neural networks can learn natural image distributions efficiently.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Referee Report

2 major / 2 minor

Summary. The paper claims that neural networks exhibit a simplicity bias by learning amplitude information (pairwise pixel correlations) before phase information (edges and higher-order correlations) when trained on image classification. From a Fourier perspective incorporating translation invariance and power-law spectra, the authors introduce a synthetic data model for translation-invariant inputs. They rigorously prove that for isotropic high-dimensional inputs, online SGD cannot learn phase-only classification within n ≪ N³ steps and requires at least n ≫ N³ log²N steps. They further show both theoretically and experimentally that power-law spectra accelerate phase learning even when spectra do not aid classification directly. Experiments with two-layer networks on textures and deep CNNs on ImageNet/CIFAR100 support the amplitude-to-phase transition and the non-trivial interaction.

Significance. If the results hold, the work provides mechanistic insights into efficient learning of natural image distributions by deep networks, extending simplicity bias analyses beyond quasi-isotropic inputs. The combination of rigorous sample-complexity bounds for the synthetic model, power-law acceleration derivations, and empirical validation on real datasets strengthens the Fourier-based explanation of learning dynamics. The parameter-free nature of the hardness lower bound and the reproducible experimental setup on standard benchmarks are notable strengths.

major comments (2)
  1. [§3.2] §3.2 (Synthetic data model definition): The central hardness claim that phase-only classification is information-theoretically and algorithmically hard for online SGD (requiring n ≫ N³ log²N) depends on the model introducing no unintended label-correlated phase alignments or higher-order dependencies under the translation-invariance constraint. The phase sampling procedure could embed weak correlations that invalidate the lower bound as a general statement about isotropic inputs; an explicit proof or numerical verification that labels remain independent of phases in the Fourier domain is needed to confirm the result is not model-specific.
  2. [Theorem 4.1] Theorem 4.1 (Hardness lower bound for online SGD): The derivation assumes the synthetic model faithfully captures the interaction between amplitudes, phases, and dynamics without artifacts. If the translation-invariance enforcement introduces even mild phase-label dependencies, the claimed separation from noise (n ≪ N³ vs n ≫ N³ log²N) may not hold in the intended regime; a direct comparison to a fully random-phase baseline would clarify whether the bound is tight.
minor comments (2)
  1. [Figure 3] Figure 3 and associated text: Error bars or multiple random seeds are not reported for the ImageNet/CIFAR100 runs, making it harder to assess the statistical significance of the observed amplitude-to-phase transition.
  2. [§2] Notation: The definition of the Fourier transform and the precise normalization used for amplitudes/phases should be stated explicitly in §2 to avoid ambiguity when comparing to standard image processing conventions.

Simulated Author's Rebuttal

2 responses · 0 unresolved

We thank the referee for their positive assessment of our work and for the constructive comments on the synthetic data model and hardness results. We address the two major comments point by point below.

read point-by-point responses

  1. Referee: [§3.2] §3.2 (Synthetic data model definition): The central hardness claim that phase-only classification is information-theoretically and algorithmically hard for online SGD (requiring n ≫ N³ log²N) depends on the model introducing no unintended label-correlated phase alignments or higher-order dependencies under the translation-invariance constraint. The phase sampling procedure could embed weak correlations that invalidate the lower bound as a general statement about isotropic inputs; an explicit proof or numerical verification that labels remain independent of phases in the Fourier domain is needed to confirm the result is not model-specific.

    Authors: We agree that an explicit check for label-phase independence is important to ensure the hardness result is not an artifact of the model construction. In Section 3.2, phases are drawn independently and uniformly, and the label is generated from a translation-invariant function of the full phase vector (specifically, a thresholded sum over selected frequency interactions). This construction is designed to make the label uncorrelated with any fixed subset of phases. To confirm, we have added numerical verification in the revision: the empirical correlation between the label and each individual phase coefficient is statistically indistinguishable from zero across multiple random seeds, and mutual information estimates are at the level of sampling noise. We will include this as a new panel in Figure 3 (or an appendix) to substantiate that no unintended dependencies are present. revision: yes

  2. Referee: [Theorem 4.1] Theorem 4.1 (Hardness lower bound for online SGD): The derivation assumes the synthetic model faithfully captures the interaction between amplitudes, phases, and dynamics without artifacts. If the translation-invariance enforcement introduces even mild phase-label dependencies, the claimed separation from noise (n ≪ N³ vs n ≫ N³ log²N) may not hold in the intended regime; a direct comparison to a fully random-phase baseline would clarify whether the bound is tight.

    Authors: We appreciate the suggestion for a random-phase baseline comparison. The proof of Theorem 4.1 shows that the expected gradient contribution from the phase variables vanishes under isotropy, with the N³ scaling arising from the variance of the stochastic updates. To verify that translation invariance does not introduce spurious dependencies that would invalidate the separation, we will add experiments in the revised version comparing our structured-phase model against a fully random-phase control (where labels are assigned independently of the input). The random-phase case learns at the rate expected for pure noise, while the structured case exhibits the predicted delay, confirming that the bound reflects the intended phase-learning difficulty rather than model artifacts. revision: yes

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

Standard high-dimensional SGD analysis supports hardness result without reduction to fitted inputs or self-citations

full rationale

The paper introduces a synthetic translation-invariant data model to control amplitudes and phases, then rigorously derives the online SGD hardness bound (n ≪ N³ vs n ≫ N³ log²N) for phase-only classification using standard high-dimensional analysis techniques. This does not reduce by construction to quantities fitted from the target result, nor does it rely on load-bearing self-citations or ansatzes smuggled from prior work. Power-law acceleration is shown both theoretically and via independent experiments on textures/ImageNet. The derivation chain is self-contained and externally falsifiable via the stated assumptions on isotropic inputs.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

0 free parameters · 1 axioms · 0 invented entities

The central claims rest on the fidelity of the synthetic data model and standard high-dimensional learning assumptions; no free parameters are fitted to produce the hardness bound, and no new entities are postulated.

axioms (1)
  • domain assumption Inputs are high-dimensional, isotropic, and translation-invariant for the hardness result on phase learning.
    Explicitly stated as the regime in which the N³ scaling is proven.

pith-pipeline@v0.9.0 · 5822 in / 1242 out tokens · 35355 ms · 2026-05-19T19:36:43.567585+00:00 · methodology

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    Similarly, cℓ 22 =E h2 v·x σC h2 u·x σB = 1 λ2 k0 E[(v·x) 2(u·x) 2]− 1 λk0 h E[(v·x) 2] +E[(u·x) 2] i + 1 = 1 λ2 k0 E[(v·x) 2(u·x) 2]−1. By exploiting the orthonormality ofuandvand Lemma C.7, we have E[(v·x) 2(u·x) 2] = N−1X k,l,m,n=0 ukulvmvnE[xkxlxmxn] =λ 2 k0 +T 4, where T4 = 2 N 4 J4(4ε)E[ρ4 k0] N−1X k,l,m,n=0 ukulvmvn cos 2πk0 N (k+l+n+m). Define now...

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