Yuyao Zhang


2025

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Hierarchical Document Refinement for Long-context Retrieval-augmented Generation
Jiajie Jin | Xiaoxi Li | Guanting Dong | Yuyao Zhang | Yutao Zhu | Yongkang Wu | Zhonghua Li | Ye Qi | Zhicheng Dou
Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)

Real-world RAG applications often encounter long-context input scenarios, where redundant information and noise results in higher inference costs and reduced performance. To address these challenges, we propose LongRefiner, an efficient plug-and-play refiner that leverages the inherent structural characteristics of long documents. LongRefiner employs dual-level query analysis, hierarchical document structuring, and adaptive refinement through multi-task learning on a single foundation model. Experiments on seven QA datasets demonstrate that LongRefiner achieves competitive performance in various scenarios while using 10x fewer computational costs and latency compared to the best baseline. Further analysis validates that LongRefiner is scalable, efficient, and effective, providing practical insights for real-world long-text RAG applications. Our code is available at https://github.com/ignorejjj/LongRefiner.

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Search-o1: Agentic Search-Enhanced Large Reasoning Models
Xiaoxi Li | Guanting Dong | Jiajie Jin | Yuyao Zhang | Yujia Zhou | Yutao Zhu | Peitian Zhang | Zhicheng Dou
Proceedings of the 2025 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing

Large reasoning models (LRMs) like OpenAI-o1 have demonstrated impressive long stepwise reasoning capabilities through large-scale reinforcement learning. However, their extended reasoning processes often suffer from knowledge insufficiency, leading to frequent uncertainties and potential errors. To address this limitation, we introduce **Search-o1**, a framework that enhances LRMs with an agentic retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) mechanism and a Reason-in-Documents module for refining retrieved documents. Search-o1 integrates an agentic search workflow into the reasoning process, enabling dynamic retrieval of external knowledge when LRMs encounter uncertain knowledge points. Additionally, due to the verbose nature of retrieved documents, we design a separate Reason-in-Documents module to deeply analyze the retrieved information before injecting it into the reasoning chain, minimizing noise and preserving coherent reasoning flow. Extensive experiments on complex reasoning tasks in science, mathematics, and coding, as well as six open-domain QA benchmarks, demonstrate the strong performance of Search-o1. This approach enhances the trustworthiness of LRMs in complex reasoning tasks, paving the way for advanced deep research systems. The code is available at https://github.com/RUC-NLPIR/Search-o1.

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Neuro-Symbolic Query Compiler
Yuyao Zhang | Zhicheng Dou | Xiaoxi Li | Jiajie Jin | Yongkang Wu | Zhonghua Li | Ye Qi | Ji-Rong Wen
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2025

Precise recognition of search intent in Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems remains a challenging goal, especially under resource constraints and for complex queries with nested structures and dependencies. This paper presents **QCompiler**, a neuro-symbolic framework inspired by linguistic grammar rules and compiler design, to bridge this gap. It theoretically presents a minimal yet sufficient Backus-Naur Form (BNF) grammar G[q] to formalize complex queries. Unlike previous methods, this grammar maintains completeness while minimizing redundancy. Based on this, QCompiler includes a query expression translator, a Lexical syntax parser, and a Recursive Descent Processor to compile queries into Abstract Syntax Trees (ASTs) for execution. The atomicity of the sub-queries in the leaf nodes ensures more precise document retrieval and response generation, significantly improving the RAG system’s ability to address complex queries.

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PD3F: A Pluggable and Dynamic DoS-Defense Framework against resource consumption attacks targeting Large Language Models
Yuanhe Zhang | Xinyue Wang | Haoran Gao | Zhenhong Zhou | Fanyu Meng | Yuyao Zhang | Sen Su
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2025

Large Language Models (LLMs), due to substantial computational requirements, are vulnerable to resource consumption attacks, which can severely degrade server performance or even cause crashes, as demonstrated by denial-of-service (DoS) attacks designed for LLMs. However, existing works lack mitigation strategies against such threats, resulting in unresolved security risks for real-world LLM deployments. To this end, we propose the Pluggable and Dynamic DoS-Defense Framework (PD3F), which employs a two-stage approach to defend against resource consumption attacks from both the input and output sides. On the input side, we propose the Resource Index to guide Dynamic Request Polling Scheduling, thereby reducing computing resource usage induced by malicious prompts under high-concurrency scenarios. On the output side, we introduce the Adaptive End-Based Suppression mechanism, which reduces excessive malicious generation. Experiments across six models demonstrate that PD3F significantly mitigates resource consumption attacks, improving users’ access capacity by up to 500% during adversarial load. PD3F represents a step toward the resilient and resource-aware deployment of LLMs against resource consumption attacks.

2024

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Enabling Discriminative Reasoning in LLMs for Legal Judgment Prediction
Chenlong Deng | Kelong Mao | Yuyao Zhang | Zhicheng Dou
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2024

Legal judgment prediction is essential for enhancing judicial efficiency. In this work, we identify that existing large language models (LLMs) underperform in this domain due to challenges in understanding case complexities and distinguishing between similar charges. To adapt LLMs for effective legal judgment prediction, we introduce the Ask-Discriminate-Predict (ADAPT) reasoning framework inspired by human judicial reasoning. ADAPT involves decomposing case facts, discriminating among potential charges, and predicting the final judgment. We further enhance LLMs through fine-tuning with multi-task synthetic trajectories to improve legal judgment prediction accuracy and efficiency under our ADAPT framework. Extensive experiments conducted on two widely-used datasets demonstrate the superior performance of our framework in legal judgment prediction, particularly when dealing with complex and confusing charges.