DISTRIBUTIONS AND CHANNEL CAPACITIES IN GENERALIZED STATISTICAL-MECHANICS

The purpose of this note is twofold. Firstly, we consider generalizati ons of Shannon's entropy and its applications to thermodynamics based on extensivity considerations. Secondly, we apply the generalized entr opy formalism to deriving various,generalised channel capacities. We a rrive at some surprising conclusions of systems achieving ''super-capa citance'' or ''sub-capacitance'' depending on the circumstances. These results suggest the possibility of improving the conventional Shannon capacity by using physical systems obeying more generalized statistic s, but also predict behaviour which is hard to reconcile with experien ce. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.