RoPE at the End of Its Rope? Theory, Diagnosis, and Mitigation of Long-Context Failures
Long-context failures of RoPE-based language models can arise from RoPE's intrinsic tradeoff between maintaining stable token preferences and distinguishing nearby positions. Determining which weakness to address, and how, requires a more precise characterization of RoPE's behavior in trained models across context lengths. We address a key limitation of prior theory by allowing unequal query-key scales across RoPE frequencies, which aligns well with practical empirical observations. Our theory makes both vulnerabilities measurable for individual heads and inputs, and quantifies how high-frequency components support positional sensitivity while potentially disrupting semantic stability. We...
| Authors | Yuyang Wu, Yufeng Du, Hao Peng |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.LG |
| Published | 30 September 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 30 September 2026 |
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