Tsallis entropy

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Tsallis entropy is a generalization of the standard Boltzmann-Gibbs entropy. It was introduced in 1988 by Constantino Tsallis as a basis for generalizing the standard statistical mechanics, and is identical in form to Havrda-Charvát structural α-entropy within Information Theory.

It is widely used in complex systems due its ability to confirm the predictions and consequences that are derived from this nonadditive entropy, such as nonextensive statistical mechanics, which generalizes the Boltzmann-Gibbs theory.

The formal definition is:

\[{\displaystyle S_{q}({p_{i}})={k \over q-1}\left(1-\sum _{i}p_{i}^{q}\right),}\]

where $q$ is real parameter sometimes called entropic-index. When ${\displaystyle q\to 1}$ , the usual Boltzmann-Gibbs entropy is recovered.

See also

Boltzmann-Gibbs entropy, Rényi entropy

Material

  • http://tsallis.cat.cbpf.br/biblio.htm

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