Overview of Renyi Entropy

Statistical Physics and Complexity Group meeting

Overview of Renyi Entropy

  • Event time: 11:30am
  • Event date: 15th March 2017
  • Speaker: Anthony Wood (Formerly School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Edinburgh)
  • Location: Room 4325A,

Event details

I will present an overview of Renyi entropy. This is a family of entropies that generalise the usual Shannon entropy, used as a tool to further detail probability distributions. I will show that this entropy satisfies the major “requirements” an entropy measure should have, and a neat physical interpretation for systems in thermal equilibrium.

I will then consider the Renyi entropy of a classical nonequilibrium system, in the Asymmetric Exclusion Process (ASEP). I will present results for the Renyi entropy that characterises behaviour across various phases, despite a nontrivial probability distribution.