This is useful, e.g., with collections that have large fields which change rarely and small fields that change more frequently. The smaller fields may be re-indexed in a new index and both indexes may be searched together.
Warning: It is up to you to make sure all indexes are created and modified the same way. For example, if you add documents to one index, you need to add the same documents in the same order to the other indexes. Failure to do so will result in undefined behavior.