diff --git a/lucene/CHANGES.txt b/lucene/CHANGES.txt
index 89d645fa9bf9..77cc97287bcf 100644
--- a/lucene/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/lucene/CHANGES.txt
@@ -36,6 +36,8 @@ Improvements
 
 * GITHUB#12305: Minor cleanup and improvements to DaciukMihovAutomatonBuilder. (Greg Miller)
 
+* GITHUB#12325: Parallelize AbstractKnnVectorQuery rewrite across slices rather than segments. (Luca Cavanna)
+
 Optimizations
 ---------------------
 
diff --git a/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/AbstractKnnVectorQuery.java b/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/AbstractKnnVectorQuery.java
index d6b9e04b542f..01c12e349e5b 100644
--- a/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/AbstractKnnVectorQuery.java
+++ b/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/AbstractKnnVectorQuery.java
@@ -19,14 +19,13 @@
 import static org.apache.lucene.search.DocIdSetIterator.NO_MORE_DOCS;
 
 import java.io.IOException;
+import java.util.ArrayList;
 import java.util.Arrays;
 import java.util.Comparator;
 import java.util.List;
 import java.util.Objects;
 import java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException;
-import java.util.concurrent.Executor;
 import java.util.concurrent.FutureTask;
-import java.util.stream.Collectors;
 import org.apache.lucene.codecs.KnnVectorsReader;
 import org.apache.lucene.index.FieldInfo;
 import org.apache.lucene.index.IndexReader;
@@ -82,11 +81,12 @@ public Query rewrite(IndexSearcher indexSearcher) throws IOException {
       filterWeight = null;
     }
 
-    Executor executor = indexSearcher.getExecutor();
+    SliceExecutor sliceExecutor = indexSearcher.getSliceExecutor();
+    // in case of parallel execution, the leaf results are not ordered by leaf context's ordinal
     TopDocs[] perLeafResults =
-        (executor == null)
+        (sliceExecutor == null)
             ? sequentialSearch(reader.leaves(), filterWeight)
-            : parallelSearch(reader.leaves(), filterWeight, executor);
+            : parallelSearch(indexSearcher.getSlices(), filterWeight, sliceExecutor);
 
     // Merge sort the results
     TopDocs topK = TopDocs.merge(k, perLeafResults);
@@ -110,27 +110,40 @@ private TopDocs[] sequentialSearch(
   }
 
   private TopDocs[] parallelSearch(
-      List<LeafReaderContext> leafReaderContexts, Weight filterWeight, Executor executor) {
-    List<FutureTask<TopDocs>> tasks =
-        leafReaderContexts.stream()
-            .map(ctx -> new FutureTask<>(() -> searchLeaf(ctx, filterWeight)))
-            .collect(Collectors.toList());
+      IndexSearcher.LeafSlice[] slices, Weight filterWeight, SliceExecutor sliceExecutor) {
+
+    List<FutureTask<TopDocs[]>> tasks = new ArrayList<>(slices.length);
+    int segmentsCount = 0;
+    for (IndexSearcher.LeafSlice slice : slices) {
+      segmentsCount += slice.leaves.length;
+      tasks.add(
+          new FutureTask<>(
+              () -> {
+                TopDocs[] results = new TopDocs[slice.leaves.length];
+                int i = 0;
+                for (LeafReaderContext context : slice.leaves) {
+                  results[i++] = searchLeaf(context, filterWeight);
+                }
+                return results;
+              }));
+    }
 
-    SliceExecutor sliceExecutor = new SliceExecutor(executor);
     sliceExecutor.invokeAll(tasks);
 
-    return tasks.stream()
-        .map(
-            task -> {
-              try {
-                return task.get();
-              } catch (ExecutionException e) {
-                throw new RuntimeException(e.getCause());
-              } catch (InterruptedException e) {
-                throw new ThreadInterruptedException(e);
-              }
-            })
-        .toArray(TopDocs[]::new);
+    TopDocs[] topDocs = new TopDocs[segmentsCount];
+    int i = 0;
+    for (FutureTask<TopDocs[]> task : tasks) {
+      try {
+        for (TopDocs docs : task.get()) {
+          topDocs[i++] = docs;
+        }
+      } catch (ExecutionException e) {
+        throw new RuntimeException(e.getCause());
+      } catch (InterruptedException e) {
+        throw new ThreadInterruptedException(e);
+      }
+    }
+    return topDocs;
   }
 
   private TopDocs searchLeaf(LeafReaderContext ctx, Weight filterWeight) throws IOException {
diff --git a/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/IndexSearcher.java b/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/IndexSearcher.java
index ce93bd9cef83..f167b7161123 100644
--- a/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/IndexSearcher.java
+++ b/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/IndexSearcher.java
@@ -998,6 +998,10 @@ public Executor getExecutor() {
     return executor;
   }
 
+  SliceExecutor getSliceExecutor() {
+    return sliceExecutor;
+  }
+
   /**
    * Thrown when an attempt is made to add more than {@link #getMaxClauseCount()} clauses. This
    * typically happens if a PrefixQuery, FuzzyQuery, WildcardQuery, or TermRangeQuery is expanded to