TITLE:
An Informational Proof of H-Theorem
AUTHORS:
Vincenzo Manca
KEYWORDS:
Thermodynamic Entropy, H-Theorem, Information Entropy, Entropic Divergence
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.4 No.2,
February
21,
2017
ABSTRACT: After a historical reconstruction of the main
Boltzmann’s ideas on mechanical statistics, a discrete version of Boltzmann’s
H-theorem is proved, by using basic concepts of information theory. Namely, H-theorem follows from the central limit theorem, acting inside a closed physical
system, and from the maximum entropy law for normal probability distributions,
which is a consequence of Kullback-Leibler entropic divergence positivity.
Finally, the relevance of discreteness and probability, for a deep
comprehension of the relationship between physical and informational entropy,
is analyzed and discussed in the light of new perspectives emerging in
computational genomics.