Mutual information as a two-point correlation function in stochastic lattice models

Abstract

In statistical physics entropy is usually introduced as a global quantity which expresses the amount of information that would be needed to specify the microscopic configuration of a system. However, for lattice models with infinitely many possible configurations per lattice site it is also meaningful to introduce entropy as a local observable that describes the information content of a single lattice site. Likewise, the mutual information between two sites can be interpreted as a two-point correlation function which quantifies how much information a lattice site has about the state of another one and vice versa. Studying a particular growth model we demonstrate that the mutual information exhibits scaling properties that are consistent with the established phenomenological scaling picture.