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SubscribeISO: An RLVR-Native Optimization Stack
Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) is rapidly advancing the reasoning capabilities of language models, yet the optimization layer that converts reward feedback into weight-space updates remains poorly understood. Building on our prior analysis (Zhu et al., 2025), we study this missing layer through the singular structure of model weights and identify spectral inheritance: RLVR can reuse the base model's weight spectra while acquiring new behavior through changes in the associated input and output singular frames. We operationalize spectral inheritance as Isospectral Optimization (ISO), an RLVR-native, fixed-spectrum optimization framework with complementary offline and online instantiations. Offline, ISO-Merger combines the frame changes of shared-base specialists into a single fixed-spectrum model, requiring no post-merge data, rollouts, gradient updates, or on-policy distillation (OPD). It recovers complementary specialist capabilities and achieves the strongest aggregate performance among the compared data-free merging methods. Online, ISO-Optimizer applies a chosen base optimizer, including AdamW and Muon, to the frame variables while keeping the base spectra fixed. Across reasoning and coding tasks ranging from 1.5B to 8B parameters, ISO-Optimizer improves accuracy in the reported runs and reaches matched scores with substantially fewer training steps. On Qwen3-8B-Base, AdamW reaches an aggregate accuracy of 0.495 after 270 training steps. ISO-AdamW reaches the same accuracy after only 100 training steps and improves further to 0.509 after 210 training steps. Together, ISO offers a concrete answer to RLVR's missing optimization layer: rather than inheriting pre-training optimization wholesale, design post-training around the structure of reward-driven adaptation: inherit the spectrum, optimize the frames.
Axial-metric/polar-gauge perturbations of the Maldacena-Milekhin-Popov wormhole
We study linear perturbations of the Maldacena-Milekhin-Popov (MMP) wormhole in the parity sector that pairs axial metric perturbations with polar gauge perturbations. It contains the axial gravitational mode and the electric field along the magnetic field lines. The lowest Landau level (LLL) of the charged fermions responds through its charge. The gauge components a_τ, a_ρ form a two-dimensional gauge field on the worldsheet of each field line, and the fermions respond with the exact Schwinger current. Lifted over the sphere, it gives the electric field the MMP screening mass m_S^2=αq^2, which is not small and survives in the mouth. In the throat the perturbation tilts the worldsheets, and the Casimir stress tensor acquires mixed components. Force balance then requires a current across the field lines, and charge conservation fixes an accompanying polarisation current, the counterpart of the Hall current of the polar sector. These currents close the Bianchi identities at first order in the fermionic backreaction α. The system reduces to three coupled master equations, given in closed form and matched to the fermion-free mouth. Consistency alone does not select the fermionic constitutive relation, but locality, covariance and the index theorem do. At α=0 the throat reduces to Poschl-Teller problems with masses l(l-1) and (l+1)(l+2) at m_S^2=0. At finite m_S^2 one mode is screened, one tends to the mass l^2+l+2, and one neutral charge-density wave stays exactly massless. The O(α) shifts of the massive normal frequencies are real and negative. The two parity sectors are isospectral only without fermions. The neutral channel sees an attractive region in each mouth, and a numerical solution coupled to the gravitational channel in the exact mouth potential finds no bound state. The sector has no growing mode for lge2 at this order.
The pseudospectrum for gravitational perturbations in Kerr spacetimes
We study the pseudospectrum of the Kerr black hole for gravitational perturbations with spin weight s=2, the case of greatest interest in gravitational-wave astronomy. In the hyperboloidal framework with two-dimensional Chebyshev collocation, we formulate the quasinormal mode problem as a non-self-adjoint eigenvalue problem. For sneq0 the fields Ψ^{(s)} and Ψ^{(-s)} are independent, so the conserved current method yields no single-field energy norm. We overcome this with the Teukolsky--Starobinsky identities, which relate Ψ^{(-2)} to a fourth-order operator on Ψ^{(2)} and yield an H^2 energy norm after symmetrization. With the H^1 norm known for s=0, this suggests the pattern H^{|s|}, verified for s=0 and s=2. All results use an ω-independent two-field hierarchy. We find that the pseudospectrum tightens by 1.1 to 3.5 decades at each step of L^2to H^1to H^2, yet stays large in every norm. The s=+2 and s=-2 operators are isospectral but not isopseudospectral: at twelve of fourteen probes the ψ_0 resolvent exceeds the ψ_4 one by 0.19 to 0.82 decades in the H^2 norm, while at the two probes furthest along the QNM line the ordering reverses by 0.18 to 0.19 decades. The gravitational pseudospectrum exceeds the scalar one by 0.5 to 5.2 decades in the window minimum and by 5.9 decades in L^2 at ωM=0.47-0.17,i, while along the damping direction the s=2 resolvent is non-monotonic and the s=0 resolvent smooth. QNM spectral instability is therefore a universal feature of Kerr, and is stronger for gravitational perturbations.
The quasinormal modes of Kerr-Newman black holes: a separated approach
We compute Kerr-Newman quasinormal modes using a recently found exact separation of the gravitoelectric perturbation equations. For each spin-label ς=pm1, a matrix angular ordinary differential equation and a scalar second-order radial ordinary differential equation define a joint spectral problem for the complex frequency ω and separation constant λ. We solve this problem by imposing regularity at the angular poles, ingoing behavior at the event horizon, and outgoing behavior at infinity. We benchmark the numerical code built to solve the separated equations, and the resulting frequencies, against recently published spectral calculations of the coupled system. Comparisons with those results yield absolute differences of order 10^{-10} to 10^{-5}, depending on the BH parameters and overtone number. We also find numerical hints of spin-label isospectrality in both the electromagnetic-led and gravitational-led sectors of fundamental quasinormal modes, even at near-extremal Kerr-Newman configurations. These results provide numerical evidence that the separated equations reproduce Kerr-Newman quasinormal frequencies and offer a practical route to exploring the ringdown of rotating, charged black holes.
Green functions of Energized complexes
If h is a ring-valued function on a simplicial complex G we can define two matrices L and g, where the matrix entries are the h energy of homoclinic intersections. We know that the sum over all h values on G is equal to the sum of the Green matrix entries g(x,y). We also have already seen that that the determinants of L or g are both the product of the h(x). In the case where h(x) is the parity of dimension, the sum of the energy values was the standard Euler characteristic and the determinant was a unit. If h(x) was the unit in the ring then L,g are integral quadratic forms which are isospectral and inverse matrices of each other. We prove here that the quadratic energy expression summing over all pairs h(x)^* h(y) of intersecting sets is a signed sum of squares of Green function entries. The quadratic energy expression is Wu characteristic in the case when h is dimension parity. For general h, the quadratic energy expression resembles an Ising Heisenberg type interaction. The conjugate of g is the inverse of L if h takes unit values in a normed ring or in the group of unitary operators in an operator algebra.
