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Entropy, Statistical Physics, and Information

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Basic Concepts in Physics

Part of the book series: Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics ((ULNP))

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Abstract

What is entropy? This term is used with several meanings in science and technology. For a chemist, “it is a function of the state of a thermodynamic system”, whereas a physicist would say that “it is a measure of the disorder of a given system”, and a communications engineer would come with a very different idea, since for him entropy would be “the average information transmitted or received in a series of messages”.

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Literature

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  7. R.K. Pathria, Statistical Mechanics, 2nd edn. (Elsevier, Oxford, 2006). An excellent treatise on statistical physics, containing a very good treatment of a broad range of topics

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  8. M. Chaichian, A. Demichev, Path Integrals in Physics. Vol. 1: Stochastic processes and quantum mechanics (IOP, Bristol, UK, 2001). The interested reader will find in this book the description of stochastic processes (and quantum mechanics) by means of path integrals

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Chaichian, M., Rojas, H.P., Tureanu, A. (2014). Entropy, Statistical Physics, and Information. In: Basic Concepts in Physics. Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19598-3_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19598-3_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-19597-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-19598-3

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