The graph above has tempdb footprint (light blue) stacked on top of used query memory (dark blue) against the left vertical axis. The green period has very limited use of query memory. During the yellow period, a moderate amount of query memory was used. During the red period, a large amount of query memory was used and at a number of points operations spilled into tempdb. As query memory was used more extensively, the CPU:lookups/sec correlation was more disrupted.
Once fully considered, this makes sense: query memory is “stolen” from the database page buffer pool. References to pages in the page pool are “page lookups”, but each time stolen query memory is poked and prodded… well, that’s not a page lookup. But it has CPU cost.
Check out the whole thing; this is a thoughtful look at an interesting data oddity.