Non-Equilibrium Local Temporal Perturbation Theory: Buffer Mechanisms for Causal Information Propagation

We develop a theoretical framework, Non-Equilibrium Local Temporal Perturbation Theory (NELTPT), that describes controllable information propagation delays in causal systems without violating global causality. Rooted in three well-established physical principles (global hyperbolicity, linearized metric perturbations, and fluctuation-dissipation theorems), we define local temporal buffer domains, causal isolation barriers, and information buffering capacity, and establish three core results: (i) Temporal buffering is physically feasible with an energy cost that scales quadratically with delay; (ii) Sufficient delay suppresses spurious signals below the noise floor; (iii) Buffer capacity is bounded by local entropy production via Landauer's principle. While gravitational realization of these buffers remains challenging at laboratory scales, we demonstrate that the mathematical structure of NELTPT is universal and can be instantiated in spiking neural networks. We present experimental evidence from a pure spiking language model architecture that provides converging evidence for the causal isolation and signal suppression predictions; the buffer capacity estimate is consistent with the entropy-bound prediction. Our work establishes a first-principles foundation for causal information processing, unifying phenomena from gravitational time dilation to neuromorphic spike timing.