Paper

Neural Collapse Dynamics: Depth, Activation, Regularisation, and Feature Norm Threshold

arXiv:2604.00230v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Neural collapse (NC) -- the convergence of penultimate-layer features to a simplex equiangular tight frame -- is well understood at equilibrium, but the dynamics governing its onset remain poorly characterised. We identify a simple and predictive regularity: NC occurs when the mean feature norm reaches a model-dataset-specific critical value, fn*, that is largely invariant to training conditions. This value concentrates tightly within each (model, dataset) pair (CV 0.2). Completing the (architecture)x(dataset) grid reveals the paper's strong…

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