The paper introduces BRIDGE, a bilevel optimization framework that jointly trains a large language model (LLM) and a retriever for agentic reinforcement learning (ARL). It demonstrates that adapting the retriever before the policy yields better rewards, and that BRIDGE outperforms existing methods on seven open‑domain QA benchmarks and medical QA tasks, achieving significant gains in accuracy and reasoning quality.
By Quan Xiao, Mingda Liu, Gaowen Liu, Katsuki Fujisawa, Tianyi Chen
arXiv:2508. 06165v5 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown strong capabilities through two complementary paradigms: Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) for knowledge grounding and Reinforcement Learning from Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) for complex reasoning.
By Weitao Li, Boran Xiang, Xiaolong Wang, Zhinan Gou, Weizhi Ma, Yang Liu
PRO-Step introduces a step‑level process reward optimization framework for Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG) that evaluates both logical validity and evidential grounding at each reasoning step. By training a generative Preference‑Based Reward Model (PRM) and using PRM‑guided value tree search to create preference pairs, the method optimizes the policy through step‑level Direct Preference Optimization. Experiments on single and multi‑hop QA benchmarks show that PRO‑STEP achieves the best average EM and F1 scores across five datasets.
By MinKeon Kim, Namjun Lee, Jaekwang Kim
arXiv:2606. 00593v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models are increasingly deployed as tool-augmented agents to acquire information beyond parametric knowledge.
By Qiming Shi, Zhaolu Kang, Yunfan Zhou, Di Weng, Yingcai Wu
arXiv:2607. 10463v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Agentic retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) extends static RAG by allowing language models to iteratively reason, generate search queries, retrieve evidence, and predict answers.
By Varun Gandhi, Jaewook Lee, Shantanu Todmal, Franck Dernoncourt, Ryan Rossi, Zichao Wang, Andrew Lan
DynaKRAG is a unified framework that learns a state‑conditioned policy to control evidence acquisition in multi‑hop retrieval‑augmented generation. It uses a deterministic validity layer to build an action set, a learned continuation gate to decide between generating an answer or gathering more evidence, and an advantage scorer to rank evidence operations by predicted gain. Across HotpotQA, 2Wiki, and MuSiQue with various backbone models, DynaKRAG achieves top EM and F1 scores, improves token and retrieval efficiency, and enables terminal evidence compression that reduces context size while boosting answer quality.
By Chenyu Zhou, Yaqi Wu, Xiaolei Guo, Jiaqi Huang, Xianfa Zhang, Junxu Zhang, Zhuo Yu, Zhubo Shi, Jianghao Lin, Dongdong Ge
arXiv:2505. 15062v5 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Knowledge extrapolation is the process of inferring novel information by combining and extending existing knowledge that is explicitly available.
By Jiashu He, Jinxuan Fan, Bowen Jiang, Ignacio Houine, Dan Roth, Alejandro Ribeiro
AgenticRag‑R1 is a reinforcement‑learning framework that integrates reasoning, retrieval, and memory through a stack and fine‑grained action space. It uses hierarchical action‑aware rewards and an information‑aware trajectory rejection strategy to support long‑horizon learning. Experiments on multi‑hop, open‑domain, and agentic reasoning benchmarks show that AgenticRag‑R1 outperforms strong baselines and produces robust, interpretable, memory‑aware reasoning behaviors.
By Xinke Jiang, Yue Fang, Zhibang Yang, Jiaran Gao, Zhixin Zhang, Tao Feng, Rihong Qiu, Wentao Zhang, Hongxin Ding, Ruizhe Zhang, Yongxin Xu, Yuheng Huang, Xu Chu, Junfeng Zhao, Yasha Wang
arXiv:2609.37443v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Long-term memory enables language models to use past interactions in future conversations. However, evidence needed to answer a question may be scatt...
By Yi-Xuan Deng, Yi Zhang, Wei Liu, Chao Xue, Shuojin Yang
arXiv:2607. 21324v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems increasingly employ multiple LLM agents.
By Paolo Pedinotti, Enrico Santus
Agentic retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) extends static RAG by allowing language models to iteratively reason, generate search queries, retrieve evidence, and predict answers. However, it remains challenging for models to decide when to retrieve, whether to use lexical matching or semantic similarity, and how to control context granularity to prevent irrelevant tokens from interfering with agent reasoning.
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems increasingly employ multiple LLM agents. Yet, most prior work optimizes components in isolation rather than coordinating improvements across the pipeline.