In this work, we present the effects of an external electric field on the Shannon entropy sum of a spherically confined hydrogenic atom. The confinement considered is of the impenetrable hard wall type. The electric field modifies the spectrum of the confined hydrogenic system, which results in avoided crossings among the energy levels of the system, with strong competition between the Coulombic and hard wall potential. The results presented indicate that the electric field is a strong candidate to modify information theoretic measures. In addition, we examine the effects of field strength, nuclear charge and hard walls on the minima/maxima structure of the entropic sum.
The appearance of critical points in the Shannon entropy sum as a function of confinement radius, in ground and excited state confined hydrogenic systems, is discussed. We illustrate that the Coulomb potential in tandem with the hard sphere confinement are responsible for these points. The positions of these points are observed to vary with the intensity of the potential. The effects of the Coulomb potential on the system are further probed, by examining the differences between the densities of the confined atom and those of the particle confined in a spherical box, for the same confinement radius. These differences are quantified by using Kullback-Leibler and cumulative residual Kullback-Leibler distance measures from information theory. These measures detect that the effects of the Coulomb potential are squeezed out of the system as the confinement radius decreases. That is, the confined atom densities resemble the particle in a box ones, for smaller confinement radii. Furthermore, the critical points in the entropy sum lie in the same regions where there are changes in the distance measures, as the atom behaves more particle in a spherical box-like. The analysis is further complemented by examination of the derivative of the entropy sum with respect to confinement radius. This study illustrates the inhomogeneity in the magnitudes of the derivatives of the entropy sum components and their dependence on the Coulomb potential. A link between the derivative and the entropic force is also illustrated and discussed. Similar behaviors are observed when the virial ratio is compared to the entropic power one, as a function of confinement radius. K E Y W O R D S confined hydrogen atom, Kullback-Leibler distance measures, quantum uncertainties, Shannon entropy sum
A definition of three-variable cumulative residual entropy is introduced, and then used to obtain expressions for higher order or triple-wise correlation measures, that are based on cumulative residual densities. These information measures are calculated in continuous variable quantum systems comprised of three oscillators, and their behaviour compared to the analogous measures from Shannon information theory. There is an overall consistency in the behaviour of the newly introduced measures as compared to the Shannon ones. There are, however, differences in interpretation, in the case of three uncoupled oscillators, where the correlation is due to wave function symmetry. In interacting systems, the cumulative based measures are shown in order to detect salient features, which are also present in the Shannon based ones.
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