6 Oct 2005; Mat-Nat Faculty (UITO), room U6=C321. Thursday 10:15-12:00

Per Jakobsen "Maximum Entropy Principle".

In this talk I will use the classical Maximum Entropy Principle to define maximum entropy wavefunctions. These are wavefunctions that maximize the entropy among all wavefunctions satisfying a finite set of constraints in the form of expectation values. This lead to a nonlinear equation for the wavefunction that reduce to the usual stationary Schrödinger equation if the energy is the only constraint and the value of the constraint is an eigenvalue. I will discuss the extension of the thermodynamical formalism to this case and apply our general formalism to two simple quantum systems, the two-level atom and a particle in a box, and compare with the results obtained by applying the usual von Neuman quantum statistical method to the same two systems.