Definition
Conceptual Expansion is a retrieval enhancement technique that uses an LLM to decompose or broaden a user's initial query into multiple semantically distinct variations. This process improves recall by ensuring the vector search captures relevant documents that may use different terminology or touch on related sub-topics, though it increases latency and computational cost per request.
Not simple synonym replacement; it involves generating new, distinct search vectors based on the underlying intent.
"A single narrow flashlight beam widening into a floodlight to illuminate the entire corner of a dark room."
- Multi-Query Retrieval(Implementation Strategy)
- Recall(Optimization Target)
- HyDE (Hypothetical Document Embeddings)(Parallel Technique)
- Vector Database(Infrastructure Component)
Conceptual Overview
Conceptual Expansion is a retrieval enhancement technique that uses an LLM to decompose or broaden a user's initial query into multiple semantically distinct variations. This process improves recall by ensuring the vector search captures relevant documents that may use different terminology or touch on related sub-topics, though it increases latency and computational cost per request.
Disambiguation
Not simple synonym replacement; it involves generating new, distinct search vectors based on the underlying intent.
Visual Analog
A single narrow flashlight beam widening into a floodlight to illuminate the entire corner of a dark room.