{
  "id": "2609.04963",
  "title": "Fractal basins trap latent reasoning",
  "authors": "Jeffrey Lai, Anthony Bao, John Quinn, William Gilpin",
  "first_public": "2026-09-04",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "arxiv": "2609.04963",
  "paper_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.04963",
  "lens": [
    "analysis",
    "recurrent"
  ],
  "representation": [
    "hidden-state"
  ],
  "computation": [
    "recurrent"
  ],
  "training": [
    "analysis-only"
  ],
  "questions": [
    "theory",
    "interpretability",
    "efficiency"
  ],
  "evidence": [
    "empirical",
    "mechanistic"
  ],
  "modality": [
    "symbolic",
    "vision"
  ],
  "summary": "Studies recurrent reasoning trajectories as dynamical systems on puzzles and mathematical logic. Links long solution times in the tested models to transient trapping near unstable states associated with nearly correct solutions.",
  "provenance": "Primary-source literature search, 2026-10-18",
  "added_at": "2026-10-18",
  "author_names": [
    "Jeffrey Lai",
    "Anthony Bao",
    "John Quinn",
    "William Gilpin"
  ],
  "record_url": "https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/2609.04963/",
  "legacy_record_url": "https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/#paper-2609-04963",
  "citation_date": "2026-09-04",
  "json_url": "https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/2609.04963/record.json",
  "markdown_url": "https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/2609.04963/index.md",
  "bibtex_url": "https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/2609.04963/citation.bib",
  "csl_url": "https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/2609.04963/citation.csl.json"
}