Feature Repulsion and Spectral Lock-in: An Empirical Study of Two-Layer Network Grokking

This empirical study investigates Tian's (2025) feature repulsion theorem in two-layer network grokking, testing its mechanisms and spectral signatures. It observes a clear structure-mechanism dissociation, with the predicted sign rule robustly holding for similar feature pairs despite a strong activation dependence in the spectral signature.