COSINE vectors whose float32 squared norm underflows pass validation and give Inf/NaN scores or poison OSQ segments

Finding LFV-046Area: codecs / vectorsPriority: lowImpact: silent wrong resultsNovelty: new

Finding page for LFV-046

AI-assisted finding, confirmed by automated checks, not yet triaged by a human Lucene committer. This site files nothing upstream.

What it shows

You index, or query with, a non-zero COSINE float vector whose float32 squared norm is 0 or subnormal. You expect it to be rejected like an all-zero vector or to score sensibly. Instead it is accepted: on the default codec it scores +Inf/NaN, a NaN batch maximum hides 64 neighbouring documents and CheckIndex falsely fails; on OSQ one such vector makes the segment centroid NaN, so kNN returns 0 hits and every merge fails.

The test shows that KnnFloatVectorField accepts the non-zero COSINE vector {1e-30, 0}, whose float32 squared norm underflows to 0, and that it then scores +Inf, so a kNN query for {0.6, 0.8} on the default codec ranks it above the identical vector.

Expected vs actual

Expected: the identical vector (doc 0) is the top hit, or the tiny vector is rejected like the zero vector. Actual: doc 1 is the top hit with score Infinity (-da: top hit (score Infinity) expected:<0> but was:<1>; -ea: Lucene's own assert Float.isFinite(r) in VectorUtil.cosine fires).

Files

• src/org/apache/lucene/document/TestCosineTinyNormTopHit.java (JUnit test)

Run it

• Tested on Lucene main e1faeba08bde (2026-11-02): still reproduces.
• Tested on Lucene main 645d4fe14a20 (2026-10-28): reproduced.
• Recorded outcome of run 1 on Lucene main 645d4fe14a20: 1 test(s) run, 1 failed.
• How to read the outcome: a failing test is the finding reproducing (the failure message states expected against actual).
• Seeds: a rerun with the same seed replays the same random choices. Assertions off (-da -dsa -Dtests.asserts=false) is the production-like setting.

# Lucene checkout at the tested commit, built with: ./gradlew --no-daemon assemble   (JDK 25)
LUCENE=/path/to/lucene; V=12.0.0-SNAPSHOT
CP=$LUCENE/lucene/core/build/libs/lucene-core-$V.jar
CP=$CP:$LUCENE/lucene/codecs/build/libs/lucene-codecs-$V.jar
CP=$CP:$LUCENE/lucene/test-framework/build/libs/lucene-test-framework-$V.jar
CP=$CP:randomizedtesting-runner-2.9.2.jar:junit-4.13.2.jar:hamcrest-3.0.jar   # test-framework dependencies (Maven Central)
CP=$CP:junit-platform-console-standalone-6.1.3.jar   # JUnit Platform console launcher (Maven Central)

javac -d classes -cp "$CP" $(find src -name '*.java')

# run 1: assertions on, seed DEADBEEF
java -ea -esa --add-modules jdk.incubator.vector --enable-native-access=ALL-UNNAMED -Dtests.seed=DEADBEEF \
     -cp "classes:$CP" org.junit.platform.console.ConsoleLauncher \
     execute --select-class org.apache.lucene.document.TestCosineTinyNormTopHit

Gradle alternative: copy the test into the matching module's src/test/ tree of the checkout and run ./gradlew -p lucene/<module> test --tests <class> -Ptests.seed=<seed> (add -Ptests.asserts=false for a run without assertions).

Formal models and scripts this finding's part of the hunt used: study-quantization-smt

Feedback

Open an issue in lucene-ai-bug-hunt. Please do not open issues or pull requests in apache/lucene about this finding unless a Lucene committer agrees it should be filed.

Snapshot of 2026-11-04. AI-assisted; not yet triaged by a human Lucene committer. Feedback: open an issue in lucene-ai-bug-hunt.