TH-RAG : Topic-Based Hierarchical Knowledge Graphs for Robust Multi-hop Reasoning in Graph-based RAG Systems

JungHyoun Kim, Soohyeong Kim, Seok Jun Hwang, Jeonghyeon Park, Yong Suk Choi


Abstract
Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) enables large language models (LLMs) to incorporate external knowledge at inference. Graph-based RAG extends this by organizing corpora into knowledge graphs, improving multi-hop reasoning and offering a global understanding of the corpus. However, triplet-based graphs generated by LLMs are often fragmented and sparsely connected, which reduces coherence and hinders reasoning. Prior enrichment methods such as clustering, community detection, or approximate graph algorithms attempt to restore connectivity but incur high computational cost and risk semantic distortion. To address these issues, we propose TH-RAG, a hierarchical framework that organizes triplets into subtopics and topics, enhancing connectivity, integrating dispersed information, and supporting robust multi-hop reasoning. Experiments on abstractive and specific QA benchmarks show that TH-RAG outperforms strong baselines in accuracy and robustness while remaining efficient, providing a scalable foundation for graph-based RAG.
Anthology ID:
2026.acl-long.1740
Volume:
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Month:
July
Year:
2026
Address:
San Diego, California, United States
Editors:
Maria Liakata, Viviane P. Moreira, Jiajun Zhang, David Jurgens
Venue:
ACL
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
37508–37531
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-acl/2026.acl-long.1740/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
JungHyoun Kim, Soohyeong Kim, Seok Jun Hwang, Jeonghyeon Park, and Yong Suk Choi. 2026. TH-RAG : Topic-Based Hierarchical Knowledge Graphs for Robust Multi-hop Reasoning in Graph-based RAG Systems. In Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), pages 37508–37531, San Diego, California, United States. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
TH-RAG : Topic-Based Hierarchical Knowledge Graphs for Robust Multi-hop Reasoning in Graph-based RAG Systems (Kim et al., ACL 2026)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-acl/2026.acl-long.1740.pdf
Checklist:
 2026.acl-long.1740.checklist.pdf