Query Decomposition

A strategy that splits a compound or multi-hop question into narrower subqueries. Each subquery may retrieve its own evidence; candidates are then aggregated, deduplicated, and reranked before the answer is composed. Dependencies matter: the result of one stage may determine the next query.

Query rewriting reformulates an information need; decomposition creates subproblems and a composition plan. It helps when required facts are distributed or one query cannot represent every constraint. Decomposition may also omit entities, propagate a faulty premise, and multiply cost or noise, so the trace should preserve the original query, subqueries, sources, and relationships among evidence.