What can quantum theory bring to information retrieval

Abstract

The probabilistic formalism of quantum physics is said to provide a sound basis for building a principled information retrieval framework. Such a framework can be based on the notion of information need vector spaces where events, such as document relevance or observed user interactions, correspond to subspaces. As in quantum theory, a probability distribution over these subspaces is defined through weighted sets of state vectors (density operators), and used to represent the current view of the retrieval system on the user information need. Tensor spaces can be used to capture different aspects of information needs. Our evaluation shows that the framework can lead to acceptable performance in an ad-hoc retrieval task. Going beyond this, we discuss the potential of the framework for three active challenges in information retrieval, namely, interaction, novelty and diversity.