One Loss Resolves Signed Rank-One Gradient Fibers: Exact Decoding on Cycle and Theta Blocks

Abstract

For masked rank-one least squares with unrestricted signs, gradients reveal weighted margins and the loss reveals the target's squared norm. We prove that this one scalar resolves the gradient ambiguity on bipartite cycle and length-three parallel-path blocks: every target fixed before sampling and nonzero on cycle edges is identified almost surely by one legal positive query drawn from an absolutely continuous law. On six-cycle flowers, open target and query sets retain $3^r$ bounded gradient candidates. A common algebraic witness excludes cross-block energy cancellation. Cactus masks admit explicit exception certificates and target-uniform finite-grid bounds; theta blocks admit an existence guarantee. For nondegenerate cactus reductions, an exact decoder returns complete actual real lists, with bit cost polynomial in input length, the cycle-degree product $D$ and the optional budget parameter $2^κ$. Energy-coordinate propagation certifies singletons without a product join. The product $D$ can grow exponentially in cycle count. Exponential certificate-degree and output bounds, and weak NP-hardness at a fixed uniform query, characterize distinct costs of exact decoding.