Regularized Bulk Universality versus Bounded-Disorder Nonuniversality for Annealed Complexity of Spherical $p$-Spin Landscapes

Abstract

Fix $p\ge 3$. We establish a separation between regularized bulk universality and unrestricted annealed complexity for the pure spherical $p$-spin Hamiltonian with independent non-Gaussian tensor coordinates. There is a symmetric, compactly supported disorder law with a smooth density, matching the first $2p$ Gaussian moments, for which the expectation of a positive, frame-averaged regularization of the one-point Kac-Rice functional is asymptotic to its Gaussian counterpart, while the unrestricted critical-point count in a compact energy window has a lower exponential rate strictly above the Gaussian limit. The obstruction is a coherent block involving on the order of $N^{1/p}$ coordinates, so neither finite moment matching nor a uniform entry bound restores unregularized annealed universality. For uniformly subexponential disorder matching the first $m$ Gaussian moments, the regularized functional on incoherent frames satisfies $\left|\log\left(\mathbb{E}\mathcal{Z}_{N,L}^J/\mathbb{E}\mathcal{Z}_{N,L}^G\right)\right|\le C N q_N^{m-1}$, where $q_N=L^{p-1}N^{-(p-2)/2}(\log N)^{(p-1)/2}$. Thus mean and variance matching imply regularized pressure universality for every $p\ge 3$, and the expectation ratio tends to one when $(m-1)(p-2)>2$. We identify the Gaussian variational limit and prove the Gaussian quadratic energy-excursion upper bound uniformly over profiles asymptotically supported on $o(N)$ coordinates under a Gaussian-rate profile-tail condition. Finally, we give a conditional reduction to exact universality: once two one-sided de-regularization defects vanish, an exact max formula makes control of the localized complement necessary and sufficient. The defects vanish in the Gaussian model.