Quantum emulation of query extension in information retrieval

Abstract

An operationalistic scheme, called Melucci metaphor, is suggested representing Information Retrieval as physical measurements with beam of particles playing the role of the flow of retrieved documents. The possibilities of query expansion by extra term are studied from this perspective, when the particles-`docuscles' are assumed to be of classical or quantum nature. It is shown that in both cases the choice of an extra term based on Bayesian belief revision is still valid on the qualitative level for boosting the relevance of the retrieved documents.