Exploring Multi-Temperature Strategies for Token- and Rollout-Level Control in RLVR
On the map: LLM reasoning → Reinforcement learning for reasoning
Abstract (arXiv)
Reinforcement Learning has demonstrated substantial improvements in the reasoning abilities of Large Language Models (LLMs), exhibiting significant applicability across various domains. Recent research has identified that tokens within LLMs play distinct roles during reasoning tasks, categorizing them into high-entropy reasoning tokens and low-entropy knowledge tokens. Prior approaches have typically focused on restricting updates to indirectly encourage exploration, yet they do not explicitly facilitate exploratory behavior during the token generation stage itself. In this work, we introduce a complementary approach that explicitly promotes exploration during sampling by applying distinct temperature settings for different token types. Specifically, our method employs higher temperatures for reasoning tokens to actively encourage exploration, while retaining lower temperatures for knowledge tokens to maintain factual correctness. Furthermore, we systematically investigate various multi-temperature scheduling strategies and their impacts within reinforcement learning contexts. Empirical evaluations on several reasoning benchmarks demonstrate that our approach significantly enhances the reasoning performance of LLMs. The code is available at https://github.com/zhmzm/Multi_Temperature_Verl.git.
Key facts. Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reinforcement learning for reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 18 of its 23 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 10 Oct 2025.
Builds on
18 of 23 references.
Closest ancestors · 8
Same direction, newest first
- 2025Outcome-based Exploration for LLM Reasoning8 Sep
- 2025Pass@k Training for Adaptively Balancing Exploration and Exploitation of Large Reasoning Models14 Aug
- 2025Decomposing the Entropy-Performance Exchange: The Missing Keys to Unlocking Effective Reinforcement Learning4 Aug
- 2025Stabilizing Knowledge, Promoting Reasoning: Dual-Token Constraints for RLVR21 Jul
- 2025Reasoning with Exploration: An Entropy Perspective17 Jun
- 2025Diversity-Aware Policy Optimization for Large Language Model Reasoning29 May
- 2025Not All Rollouts are Useful: Down-Sampling Rollouts in LLM Reinforcement Learning18 Apr
- 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms20 Jul
Other references · 10
- 2021Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Datasetcited by 5,203
- 2023Increasing Diversity While Maintaining Accuracy: Text Data Generation with Large Language Models and Human Interventionscited by 121
- 2025Jointly Reinforcing Diversity and Quality in Language Model Generationscited by 79
- 2024EDT: Improving Large Language Models' Generation by Entropy-based Dynamic Temperature Samplingcited by 42
- 2025Optimizing Temperature for Language Models with Multi-Sample Inferencecited by 33
- 2024Dynamic Stochastic Decoding Strategy for Open-Domain Dialogue Generationcited by 9
- 2024Adaptive Decoding via Latent Preference Optimizationcited by 9
- 2025How Diversely Can Language Models Solve Problems? Exploring the Algorithmic Diversity of Model-Generated Codecited by 9
- 2025Improving Diversity in Language Models: When Temperature Fails, Change the Losscited by 7
- 2024Is Functional Correctness Enough to Evaluate Code Language Models? Exploring Diversity of Generated Codescited by 5
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 8.
8 papers.
- 2026Look Inward to Explore Outward: Learning Temperature Policy from LLM Internal States via Hierarchical RLcited by 27
- 2026Beyond Mode Collapse: Distribution Matching for Diverse Reasoningcited by 5
- 2026When Sharpening Becomes Collapse: Sampling Bias and Semantic Coupling in RL with Verifiable Rewardscited by 4
- 2026Where Rollouts Begin: Low-Load, High-Leverage First-Token Diversification for RLVRcited by 2
- 2026Smaller Models are Natural Explorers for Policy-Level Diversity in GRPOcited by 1
- 2026Know Thy Reasoner: Not All Language Models Explore Alikecited by 0
- 2026Parameter Exploration for RLVR via Variational Learningcited by 0
- 2026Cool the Sampler, Not the Learner: Sampling Temperature Moves the Staleness Cliff of Importance-Corrected GRPOcited by 0
- 2026Cool the Sampler, Not the Learner: Sampling Temperature Moves the Staleness Cliff of Importance-Corrected GRPO29 Sep 2026
- 2026Parameter Exploration for RLVR via Variational Learning10 Aug 2026
- 2026Smaller Models are Natural Explorers for Policy-Level Diversity in GRPO29 May 2026
- 2026Where Rollouts Begin: Low-Load, High-Leverage First-Token Diversification for RLVR27 May 2026
- 2026Beyond Mode Collapse: Distribution Matching for Diverse Reasoning19 May 2026
- 2026Know Thy Reasoner: Not All Language Models Explore Alike12 Apr 2026
- 2026Look Inward to Explore Outward: Learning Temperature Policy from LLM Internal States via Hierarchical RL13 Feb 2026
- 2026When Sharpening Becomes Collapse: Sampling Bias and Semantic Coupling in RL with Verifiable Rewards22 Jan 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2025Beyond the 80/20 Rule: High-Entropy Minority Tokens Drive Effective Reinforcement Learning for LLM Reasoning
- 2025Enhancing Efficiency and Exploration in Reinforcement Learning for LLMs
- 2025Not All Tokens Matter: Towards Efficient LLM Reasoning via Token Significance in Reinforcement Learning
- 2025Efficient Reinforcement Learning with Semantic and Token Entropy for LLM Reasoning
- 2026Temperature as a Meta-Policy: Adaptive Temperature in LLM Reinforcement Learning
- 2025Revisiting Entropy in Reinforcement Learning for Large Reasoning Models
- 2025On the Role of Temperature Sampling in Test-Time Scaling
- 2026GMTS: Gradient Magnitude-based Token Selection Improves RLVR Training for LLM Reasoning