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Query Transformation Retrieval(QTR)
Rewrite or expand the user query before retrieval so embeddings land near relevant documents. HyDE generates a hypothetical answer document and embeds that to find real neighbors, multi-query expansion issues several reformulations and fuses the results, and step-back prompting abstracts the question to retrieve underlying principles first. These transformations give large zero-shot retrieval gains without training the retriever.
In 30 seconds
- What
- Rewrites or expands queries before retrieval-via hypothetical answers, multiple reformulations, or abstraction to principles-to improve embedding alignment with relevant documents.
- When to use
- Vague or under-specified user questions where direct embedding fails to surface relevant documents without retraining the retriever.
- Watch out
- Transformation can hallucinate plausible but incorrect intermediate queries, leading to confident retrieval of irrelevant or misleading documents.
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Query Transformation Retrieval: Overview
Rewrite or expand the user query before retrieval so embeddings land near relevant documents. HyDE generates a hypothetical answer document and embeds that to find real neighbors, multi-query expansion issues several reformulations and fuses the results, and step-back prompting abstracts the question to retrieve underlying principles first. These transformations give large zero-shot retrieval gains without training the retriever.
- HyDE hypothetical document embedding
- Multi-query reformulation and fusion
- Step-back abstraction to principles
- Query decomposition into sub-questions
- Reciprocal rank fusion of result sets
- Training-free retriever improvement
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References
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