@inproceedings{chen-etal-2026-gta,
title = "{GTA}-{RAG}: Graph-Trajectory-Augmented Reinforcement Learning for Multi-Turn Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning",
author = "Chen, Jun and
Liu, Yongchao and
Qiu, Pengyu and
Zheng, Jiajun and
Zhang, Juelu and
Zeng, Yujie and
Zhang, Qin and
Qiao, Ziyue and
Luo, Xiao",
editor = "Lee, Hung-Yi and
Dev, Sunipa and
Li, Jessy and
Elliott, Desmond",
booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {EMNLP} 2026",
month = oct,
year = "2026",
address = "Budapest, Hungary",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.2383/",
pages = "51207--51218",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-462-0",
abstract = "Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) enables LLMs to access external knowledge for answering knowledge-intensive questions. For complex multi-hop questions, multi-turn retrieval-augmented reasoning extends RAG into an iterative process that repeatedly searches for and integrates evidence across documents. However, existing reinforcement-learning (RL) approaches for agentic RAG are typically optimized with final-answer rewards, which provide sparse supervision and overlook whether the model actually retrieves the required evidence chain. We present GTA-RAG, a graph-trajectory-augmented RL framework for multi-turn retrieval-augmented reasoning. From an entity{--}document graph, we sample connected document paths, synthesize multi-hop QA trajectories, and validate them with the deployed retriever to obtain executable trajectory-level supervision. We then optimize the retrieval policy with Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) and a trajectory-guided reward that encourages both accurate answers and acquisition of target evidence documents, followed by answer-reward training on natural QA instances. Experiments on three multi-hop and two simple QA benchmarks show that GTA-RAG consistently outperforms RL-based RAG baselines with both Qwen2.5-3B and Qwen2.5-7B backbones, while substantially improving evidence-chain coverage. Our code is available at https://github.com/cjcj46262/GTA-RAG"
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<abstract>Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) enables LLMs to access external knowledge for answering knowledge-intensive questions. For complex multi-hop questions, multi-turn retrieval-augmented reasoning extends RAG into an iterative process that repeatedly searches for and integrates evidence across documents. However, existing reinforcement-learning (RL) approaches for agentic RAG are typically optimized with final-answer rewards, which provide sparse supervision and overlook whether the model actually retrieves the required evidence chain. We present GTA-RAG, a graph-trajectory-augmented RL framework for multi-turn retrieval-augmented reasoning. From an entity–document graph, we sample connected document paths, synthesize multi-hop QA trajectories, and validate them with the deployed retriever to obtain executable trajectory-level supervision. We then optimize the retrieval policy with Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) and a trajectory-guided reward that encourages both accurate answers and acquisition of target evidence documents, followed by answer-reward training on natural QA instances. Experiments on three multi-hop and two simple QA benchmarks show that GTA-RAG consistently outperforms RL-based RAG baselines with both Qwen2.5-3B and Qwen2.5-7B backbones, while substantially improving evidence-chain coverage. Our code is available at https://github.com/cjcj46262/GTA-RAG</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T GTA-RAG: Graph-Trajectory-Augmented Reinforcement Learning for Multi-Turn Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning
%A Chen, Jun
%A Liu, Yongchao
%A Qiu, Pengyu
%A Zheng, Jiajun
%A Zhang, Juelu
%A Zeng, Yujie
%A Zhang, Qin
%A Qiao, Ziyue
%A Luo, Xiao
%Y Lee, Hung-Yi
%Y Dev, Sunipa
%Y Li, Jessy
%Y Elliott, Desmond
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026
%D 2026
%8 October
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Budapest, Hungary
%@ 979-8-89176-462-0
%F chen-etal-2026-gta
%X Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) enables LLMs to access external knowledge for answering knowledge-intensive questions. For complex multi-hop questions, multi-turn retrieval-augmented reasoning extends RAG into an iterative process that repeatedly searches for and integrates evidence across documents. However, existing reinforcement-learning (RL) approaches for agentic RAG are typically optimized with final-answer rewards, which provide sparse supervision and overlook whether the model actually retrieves the required evidence chain. We present GTA-RAG, a graph-trajectory-augmented RL framework for multi-turn retrieval-augmented reasoning. From an entity–document graph, we sample connected document paths, synthesize multi-hop QA trajectories, and validate them with the deployed retriever to obtain executable trajectory-level supervision. We then optimize the retrieval policy with Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) and a trajectory-guided reward that encourages both accurate answers and acquisition of target evidence documents, followed by answer-reward training on natural QA instances. Experiments on three multi-hop and two simple QA benchmarks show that GTA-RAG consistently outperforms RL-based RAG baselines with both Qwen2.5-3B and Qwen2.5-7B backbones, while substantially improving evidence-chain coverage. Our code is available at https://github.com/cjcj46262/GTA-RAG
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.2383/
%P 51207-51218
Markdown (Informal)
[GTA-RAG: Graph-Trajectory-Augmented Reinforcement Learning for Multi-Turn Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.2383/) (Chen et al., Findings 2026)
ACL
- Jun Chen, Yongchao Liu, Pengyu Qiu, Jiajun Zheng, Juelu Zhang, Yujie Zeng, Qin Zhang, Ziyue Qiao, and Xiao Luo. 2026. GTA-RAG: Graph-Trajectory-Augmented Reinforcement Learning for Multi-Turn Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026, pages 51207–51218, Budapest, Hungary. Association for Computational Linguistics.