arXiv — Machine Learning · · 3 min read

Complementing reinforcement learning with SFT through logit averaging in the post training of LLMs

Mirrored from arXiv — Machine Learning for archival readability. Support the source by reading on the original site.

Computer Science > Machine Learning

arXiv:2605.20555 (cs)
[Submitted on 19 May 2026]

Title:Complementing reinforcement learning with SFT through logit averaging in the post training of LLMs

View a PDF of the paper titled Complementing reinforcement learning with SFT through logit averaging in the post training of LLMs, by Xingwei Gan and 1 other authors
View PDF HTML (experimental)
Abstract:We introduce a novel method that averages the logits of a frozen reference policy (e.g., SFT) and a trainable policy, and incorporate the method into Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO). In contrast to Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) methods, our proposal does not involve a Kullback Leibler (KL) regularization or critic; the trainable policy and the reference anchor are coupled through the logit averaging structure to leverage the reasoning expertise of the trainable policy while maintaining the formatting advantage of SFT. Our method is evaluated on MATH, cn-k12, and MMLU, and the results show a higher accuracy or at least comparable accuracy relative to the canonical KL-regularized GRPO.
Subjects: Machine Learning (cs.LG); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
Cite as: arXiv:2605.20555 [cs.LG]
  (or arXiv:2605.20555v1 [cs.LG] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.20555
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

Submission history

From: Xingwei Gan [view email]
[v1] Tue, 19 May 2026 23:15:18 UTC (1,841 KB)
Full-text links:

Access Paper:

    View a PDF of the paper titled Complementing reinforcement learning with SFT through logit averaging in the post training of LLMs, by Xingwei Gan and 1 other authors
  • View PDF
  • HTML (experimental)
  • TeX Source

Current browse context:

cs.LG
< prev   |   next >
Change to browse by:

References & Citations

Loading...

BibTeX formatted citation

loading...
Data provided by:

Bookmark

BibSonomy Reddit
Bibliographic Tools

Bibliographic and Citation Tools

Bibliographic Explorer Toggle
Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)
Connected Papers Toggle
Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)
Litmaps Toggle
Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)
scite.ai Toggle
scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)
Code, Data, Media

Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article

alphaXiv Toggle
alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)
Links to Code Toggle
CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)
DagsHub Toggle
DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)
GotitPub Toggle
Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)
Huggingface Toggle
Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)
ScienceCast Toggle
ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)
Demos

Demos

Replicate Toggle
Replicate (What is Replicate?)
Spaces Toggle
Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?)
Spaces Toggle
TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?)
Related Papers

Recommenders and Search Tools

Link to Influence Flower
Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?)
Core recommender toggle
CORE Recommender (What is CORE?)
IArxiv recommender toggle
IArxiv Recommender (What is IArxiv?)
About arXivLabs

arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

Discussion (0)

Sign in to join the discussion. Free account, 30 seconds — email code or GitHub.

Sign in →

No comments yet. Sign in and be the first to say something.

More from arXiv — Machine Learning