Multiscale measures of equilibrium on finite dynamic systems

Abstract

This article presents a new method for the study of the evolution of dynamic systems based on the notion of quantity of information. The system is divided into elementary cells and the quantity of information is studied with respect to the cell size. We have introduced an analogy between quantity of information and entropy, and defined the intrinsic entropy as the entropy of the whole system independent of the size of the cells. It is shown that the intrinsic entropy follows a Gaussian probability density function (PDF) and thereafter, the time needed by the system to reach equilibrium is a random variable. For a finite system, statistical analyses show that this entropy converges to a state of equilibrium and an algorithmic method is proposed to quantify the time needed to reach equilibrium for a given confidence interval level. A Monte-Carlo simulation of diffusion of A* atoms in A is then provided to illustrate the proposed simulation. It follows that the time to reach equilibrium for a constant error probability, te, depends on the number, n, of elementary cells as: te∝n2.22±0.06. For an infinite system size (n infinite), the intrinsic entropy obtained by statistical modelling is a pertinent characteristic number of the system at the equilibrium.