PLoS ONE (Jan 2014)

Production and transfer of energy and information in Hamiltonian systems.

  • Chris G Antonopoulos,
  • Ezequiel Bianco-Martinez,
  • Murilo S Baptista

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0089585
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 2
p. e89585

Abstract

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We present novel results that relate energy and information transfer with sensitivity to initial conditions in chaotic multi-dimensional Hamiltonian systems. We show the relation among Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy, Lyapunov exponents, and upper bounds for the Mutual Information Rate calculated in the Hamiltonian phase space and on bi-dimensional subspaces. Our main result is that the net amount of transfer from kinetic to potential energy per unit of time is a power-law of the upper bound for the Mutual Information Rate between kinetic and potential energies, and also a power-law of the Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy. Therefore, transfer of energy is related with both transfer and production of information. However, the power-law nature of this relation means that a small increment of energy transferred leads to a relatively much larger increase of the information exchanged. Then, we propose an "experimental" implementation of a 1-dimensional communication channel based on a Hamiltonian system, and calculate the actual rate with which information is exchanged between the first and last particle of the channel. Finally, a relation between our results and important quantities of thermodynamics is presented.