LexSemBridge: Fine-Grained Dense Representation Enhancement through Token-Aware Embedding Augmentation

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Zhan, Shaoxiong, Lin, Hai, Tan, Hongming, Cai, Xiaodong, Zheng, Hai-Tao, Su, Xin, Shan, Zifei, Liu, Ruitong, Kim, Hong-Gee
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Zhan, Shaoxiong
Lin, Hai
Tan, Hongming
Cai, Xiaodong
Zheng, Hai-Tao
Su, Xin
Shan, Zifei
Liu, Ruitong
Kim, Hong-Gee
author_facet Zhan, Shaoxiong
Lin, Hai
Tan, Hongming
Cai, Xiaodong
Zheng, Hai-Tao
Su, Xin
Shan, Zifei
Liu, Ruitong
Kim, Hong-Gee
contents As queries in retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines powered by large language models (LLMs) become increasingly complex and diverse, dense retrieval models have demonstrated strong performance in semantic matching. Nevertheless, they often struggle with fine-grained retrieval tasks, where precise keyword alignment and span-level localization are required, even in cases with high lexical overlap that would intuitively suggest easier retrieval. To systematically evaluate this limitation, we introduce two targeted tasks, keyword retrieval and part-of-passage retrieval, designed to simulate practical fine-grained scenarios. Motivated by these observations, we propose LexSemBridge, a unified framework that enhances dense query representations through fine-grained, input-aware vector modulation. LexSemBridge constructs latent enhancement vectors from input tokens using three paradigms: Statistical (SLR), Learned (LLR), and Contextual (CLR), and integrates them with dense embeddings via element-wise interaction. Theoretically, we show that this modulation preserves the semantic direction while selectively amplifying discriminative dimensions. LexSemBridge operates as a plug-in without modifying the backbone encoder and naturally extends to both text and vision modalities. Extensive experiments across semantic and fine-grained retrieval tasks validate the effectiveness and generality of our approach. All code and models are publicly available at https://github.com/Jasaxion/LexSemBridge/
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_17858
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle LexSemBridge: Fine-Grained Dense Representation Enhancement through Token-Aware Embedding Augmentation
Zhan, Shaoxiong
Lin, Hai
Tan, Hongming
Cai, Xiaodong
Zheng, Hai-Tao
Su, Xin
Shan, Zifei
Liu, Ruitong
Kim, Hong-Gee
Information Retrieval
As queries in retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines powered by large language models (LLMs) become increasingly complex and diverse, dense retrieval models have demonstrated strong performance in semantic matching. Nevertheless, they often struggle with fine-grained retrieval tasks, where precise keyword alignment and span-level localization are required, even in cases with high lexical overlap that would intuitively suggest easier retrieval. To systematically evaluate this limitation, we introduce two targeted tasks, keyword retrieval and part-of-passage retrieval, designed to simulate practical fine-grained scenarios. Motivated by these observations, we propose LexSemBridge, a unified framework that enhances dense query representations through fine-grained, input-aware vector modulation. LexSemBridge constructs latent enhancement vectors from input tokens using three paradigms: Statistical (SLR), Learned (LLR), and Contextual (CLR), and integrates them with dense embeddings via element-wise interaction. Theoretically, we show that this modulation preserves the semantic direction while selectively amplifying discriminative dimensions. LexSemBridge operates as a plug-in without modifying the backbone encoder and naturally extends to both text and vision modalities. Extensive experiments across semantic and fine-grained retrieval tasks validate the effectiveness and generality of our approach. All code and models are publicly available at https://github.com/Jasaxion/LexSemBridge/
title LexSemBridge: Fine-Grained Dense Representation Enhancement through Token-Aware Embedding Augmentation
topic Information Retrieval
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.17858