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Reinforcement Learning Meets Large Language Models: A Survey of Advancements and Applications Across the LLM Lifecycle

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arxiv 2509.16679 v1 pith:VFSZIZUG submitted 2025-09-20 cs.CL

Reinforcement Learning Meets Large Language Models: A Survey of Advancements and Applications Across the LLM Lifecycle

classification cs.CL
keywords llmsreasoningacrosslearninglifecyclereinforcementadvancementsalignment
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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In recent years, training methods centered on Reinforcement Learning (RL) have markedly enhanced the reasoning and alignment performance of Large Language Models (LLMs), particularly in understanding human intents, following user instructions, and bolstering inferential strength. Although existing surveys offer overviews of RL augmented LLMs, their scope is often limited, failing to provide a comprehensive summary of how RL operates across the full lifecycle of LLMs. We systematically review the theoretical and practical advancements whereby RL empowers LLMs, especially Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR). First, we briefly introduce the basic theory of RL. Second, we thoroughly detail application strategies for RL across various phases of the LLM lifecycle, including pre-training, alignment fine-tuning, and reinforced reasoning. In particular, we emphasize that RL methods in the reinforced reasoning phase serve as a pivotal driving force for advancing model reasoning to its limits. Next, we collate existing datasets and evaluation benchmarks currently used for RL fine-tuning, spanning human-annotated datasets, AI-assisted preference data, and program-verification-style corpora. Subsequently, we review the mainstream open-source tools and training frameworks available, providing clear practical references for subsequent research. Finally, we analyse the future challenges and trends in the field of RL-enhanced LLMs. This survey aims to present researchers and practitioners with the latest developments and frontier trends at the intersection of RL and LLMs, with the goal of fostering the evolution of LLMs that are more intelligent, generalizable, and secure.

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Cited by 10 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

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    ICT framework applies JS divergence to token logits to select critical tokens for selective RLVR updates, claiming 4.58% average pass@4 gains on Qwen2.5 models across seven reasoning benchmarks.

  2. ThinkDeception: A Progressive Reinforcement Learning Framework for Interpretable Multimodal Deception Detection

    cs.AI 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    ThinkDeception introduces MLLMs, a multimodal CoT dataset, and VAC-GRPO progressive RL to convert deception detection into interpretable reasoning and claims new SOTA accuracy plus rationale quality.

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    cs.AI 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    TRACER combines a controller-regret layer using regret matching for speak/skip decisions with a generation-credit layer using GSPO rewards to enable learned collaboration in multi-LLM reasoning.

  4. Tailoring Teaching to Aptitude: Direction-Adaptive Self-Distillation for LLM Reasoning

    cs.LG 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    DASD improves math reasoning in LLMs by adaptively directing self-distillation based on per-token entropy to balance exploration and step accuracy, outperforming prior self-distillation and RLVR baselines on six benchmarks.

  5. Spectral Origins of the Self-Correction Blind Spot in Autoregressive Generation

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    Self-correction blind spots in residual-stream autoregressive models arise iff the product of attention Jacobians has spectral radius ≥1, with a sharp marker threshold and RL coupling condition derived from that radius.

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    A GRPO framework that treats thinking as a tool call and uses dual-level regulation so multimodal models learn when to reason versus answer directly.

  7. StaRPO: Stability-Augmented Reinforcement Policy Optimization

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    StaRPO improves LLM reasoning by adding autocorrelation function and path efficiency stability metrics to RL policy optimization, yielding higher accuracy and fewer logic errors on reasoning benchmarks.

  8. Shattering the Autoregressive Curse: Dynamic Epistemic Entropy Orchestrated Erasable Reinforcement Learning for LLMs

    cs.AI 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 4.0

    E³RL uses dynamic thresholds on epistemic entropy from autoregressive cross-entropy to enable erasable RL in LLM reasoning, reporting 5.349% and 6.514% gains on AIME for 4B and 8B models over prior SOTA.

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