Geometric and quantum methods for information retrieval

This paper reviews the recent developments in applying geometric and quantum mechanics methods for information retrieval and natural language processing. It discusses the interesting analogies between components of information retrieval and quantum mechanics. It then describes some quantum mechanics phenomena found in the conventional data analysis and in the psychological experiments for word association. It also presents the applications of the concepts and methods in quantum mechanics such as quantum logic and tensor product to document retrieval and meaning of composite words, respectively. The purpose of the paper is to give the state of the art on and to draw attention of the IR community to the geometric and quantum methods and their potential applications in IR and NLP.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: SIGIR
• Authors: Yaoyong Li, Hamish Cunningham
• Keywords: Information Retrieval, Information Technology, Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics Phenomena, SIGIR 2008