Amortized Reasoning Tree Search: Decoupling Proposal and Decision in Large Language Models

2026-02-13

Technology Category

• Reasoning under Uncertainty: Other Foundations of Reasoning under Uncertainty
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Argumentation
• Machine Learning: Calibration & Uncertainty Quantification

Application Category

• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web learning to rank, online learning, and counterfactual learning for ranking
• Semantics and Knowledge: Methods to enhance, augment, integrate or synergize semantic models such as knowledge graphs and LLMs
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: LLM based quality controls for crowd work

Abstract

Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) has established itself as the dominant paradigm for instilling rigorous reasoning capabilities in Large Language Models. While effective at amplifying dominant behaviors, we identify a critical pathology in this alignment process: the systematic suppression of valid but rare (low-likelihood under the base model distribution) reasoning paths. We theoretically characterize this phenomenon as a"Normalization Squeeze,"where the interplay between mode-seeking policy gradients and finite sampling acts as a high-pass likelihood filter, driving the probability of rare correct traces to statistical extinction. To counteract this collapse without discarding the base model's latent diversity, we propose Amortized Reasoning Tree Search (ARTS). Unlike standard approaches that force internalization via parameter updates, ARTS prioritizes deliberation by decoupling generation from verification. We introduce a Flow Matching objective that repurposes the verifier to estimate the conservation of probability flow, enabling robust navigation through sparse, high-entropy search spaces where traditional discriminative objectives fail. Extensive experiments on the MATH-500 benchmark demonstrate that ARTS achieves a performance of 74.6% (BoN@16), effectively matching fully fine-tuned policies (74.7%) without modifying the generative backbone. Crucially, on the long-tail subset where coupled RL optimization collapses to 0% pass@k, ARTS uniquely recovers significant performance, suggesting that disentangling verification from generation offers a more robust pathway for solving complex reasoning tasks.

Problem

• Normalization Squeeze
• rare reasoning paths
• reinforcement learning
• verifiable rewards
• reasoning collapse

Innovation

• Amortized Reasoning Tree Search
• Normalization Squeeze
• Flow Matching
• Decoupled Generation and Verification
• Reasoning in Large Language Models