{
  "id": "2609.16665",
  "title": "Right Direction, Wrong Step: Geometric Analysis of Finite-Step Failure in Looped Transformers",
  "authors": "Zhihao Guo, Zonghan Wu, Haizhou Du, Huan Huo, Yilei Shao, Athanasios V. Vasilakos, Qingsong Wen",
  "first_public": "2026-09-15",
  "added_at": "2026-10-18",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "arxiv": "2609.16665",
  "paper_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.16665",
  "summary": "Studies updates that initially increase support for a reference answer but overshoot when applied in full. Uses curvature along each update to explain failures and identify smaller useful steps.",
  "lens": [
    "analysis",
    "recurrent"
  ],
  "representation": [
    "hidden-state"
  ],
  "computation": [
    "recurrent",
    "depth-wise"
  ],
  "training": [
    "analysis-only"
  ],
  "questions": [
    "theory",
    "limitations",
    "controllability"
  ],
  "evidence": [
    "formal",
    "empirical",
    "boundary"
  ],
  "modality": [
    "language",
    "symbolic"
  ],
  "provenance": "Primary-source literature search, 2026-10-18",
  "author_names": [
    "Zhihao Guo",
    "Zonghan Wu",
    "Haizhou Du",
    "Huan Huo",
    "Yilei Shao",
    "Athanasios V. Vasilakos",
    "Qingsong Wen"
  ],
  "record_url": "https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/2609.16665/",
  "legacy_record_url": "https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/#paper-2609-16665",
  "citation_date": "2026-09-15",
  "json_url": "https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/2609.16665/record.json",
  "markdown_url": "https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/2609.16665/index.md",
  "bibtex_url": "https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/2609.16665/citation.bib",
  "csl_url": "https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/2609.16665/citation.csl.json"
}