Elastic Search nested multimatch query

The only solution that I managed to work out, which is not handy nor elegant but somehow works is such query:

"query": {    "bool": {        "should": [            {                "nested": {                    "path": "authors",                    "query": {                        "multi_match": {                            "query": "higgs",                            "fields": ["last_name^2"]                        }                    }                }             },            {                "multi_match": {                    "query": "higgs",                    "fields": ["abstract.summary^5"]                }            }        ]    }}

I'm also not sure if the boosting will work as expected, providing it's set in different queries. Any suggestions appreciated.

Changing your mapping to the following one which uses include_in_root: true will allow you to use the query you original wrote:

{    "abstract": {        "properties": {            "summary": {                "type": "string"            }        }    },    "authors": {        "type": "nested",        "include_in_root": true,        "properties": {            "first_name": {                "type": "string"            },            "last_name": {                 "type": "string"            }        }    }}

You may want to index inner objects both as nested fields and as flattened object fields. This can be achieved by setting include_in_parent to true. - Link

Note: include_in_root may be deprecated in future versions of elasticsearch in favor of copy_to.