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arXiv:2609.21260

Pair density Shannon information measures and their $N$-dependent behaviour in diatomic molecular systems

Saul J. C. Salazar, J. Antonio Zarate, J. M. Solano-Altamirano, Humberto G. Laguna, Julio M. Hernandez-Perez, Robin P. Sagar

quant-phSubmitted Sep 18, 2026• Announced Sep 21, 2026
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Abstract

Pair density Shannon entropies and mutual information in position and in momentum space are calculated for two series of homonuclear and heteronuclear diatomic molecules using Hartree-Fock wave functions. The pair density entropy sum increases with the quality of the basis set. Mutual information, a measure of statistical correlation, is seen to be smaller in momentum space as compared to position space. The interpretation is that the momentum pair density is closer than the position pair density to a Hartree-like reference. The $N$-dependent behaviours of the entropy and mutual information sums are examined by fitting the data to three different model behaviours. Results show that these models are capable of representing the molecular data in differing degrees. The parameters obtained from a particular model are relatively constant across different chemical series. This adds evidence to the argument of a universal $N$-dependent behaviour of the entropy sums.

Journal reference
Int. J. Quant. Chem. 126, no. 13 (2026): e70246
DOI
10.1002/qua.70246.

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Pair density Shannon information measures and their NNN-dependent behaviour in diatomic molecular systems
Pair density Shannon entropies and mutual information in position and in momentum space are calculated for two series of homonuclear and heteronuclear diatomic molecules using Hartree-Fock wave functions. The pair density entropy sum increases with the quality of the basis set. Mutual information, a measure of statistical correlation, is seen to be smaller in momentum space as compared to position space. The interpretation is that the momentum pair density is closer than the position pair density to a Hartree-like reference. The NNN-dependent behaviours of the entropy and mutual information sums are examined by fitting the data to three different model behaviours. Results show that these models are capable of representing the molecular data in differing degrees. The parameters obtained from a particular model are relatively constant across different chemical series. This adds evidence to the argument of a universal NNN-dependent behaviour of the entropy sums.
Atomic information entropies are computed from configuration interaction wavefunctions for members of the lithium isoelectronic series. For each member of the series, a sequence of wavefunctions built from increasingly larger basis sets is generated which satisfies a density convergence criterion, and exhibits a monotonic behaviour with respect to the density generated from the wavefunctions. Studies of the behaviour of the entropies along a sequence for a particular atom includes trends which have been shown to be present at the Hartree-Fock level. Results suggest that the position and momentum entropies are sensitive to small changes in density and thus can be useful indicators of the quality of the density. The sum of the entropies is also shown to be a useful indicator when density differences are larger. The nature of the information entropy-energy relationship is examined.
The sums of position- and momentum-space mutual information measures are used to examine the pairwise and higher-order statistical correlation in the ground states of N-particle coupled oscillators. Analytical expressions for these measures are shown to be related to the logarithmic interaction energies of these states, plus those of mirror states where the intensities of the one- and two-body potentials are interchanged, and the nature of the attractive or repulsive interaction is opposite to that in the original state. The measures separate the contributions from the interactions and those from the effective interactions due to marginalization into different terms. The pairwise mutual information sum is linearly related to the Shannon entropy sum in two particle systems, while the total correlation sum exhibits a similar relationship in three particle ones. In the latter instance, the interaction information sum can be related to entropy differences. This illustrates how entropy sums are connected to correlation measure sums in these systems. All measures approach zero with large N, when the magnitudes of the one- and two-body potentials are fixed. The pair mutual information and total correlation sums decay monotonically with N in the presence of an attractive potential and monotonically increase with a repulsive potential. On the other hand, the interaction information sum exhibits a minimum at small N, with an attractive potential. This is a consequence of the higher-order correlations governing behavior at smaller N while the pairwise ones dominate at larger N. Results are presented when the magnitude of the one-body potential is set to N.
The universal property for the information entropy S = a + h In Ζ is verified for atoms using a systematic study with Roothaan-Hartree-Fock (RHF) wave functions with atomic number Ζ — 2 — 54. The above relation was proposed previously for atoms, nuclei, atomic clusters and correlated atoms in a trap. Kullback-Leibler relative entropy Κ and Jensen-Shannon divergence J are employed to compare RHF with Thomas-Fermi (TF) density of atoms as well as another phenomenological density obtained by Sagar et al. Two-body density distributions in position- and momentum-space are used to calculate and compare the corresponding information entropies for correlated and uncorrelated nuclei and bosonic systems (correlated atoms in a trap). It is seen that short-range correlations (SRC) increase the values of S. One-body information entropy entropy S\ is compared with two-body information entropy and a conjecture is made for TV-body information entropy SN- The entropy Κ and the divergence J are also used to evaluate the information distance between correlated and uncorrelated densities both at the one- and the two-body levels for nuclei and trapped Bose gases.
Shannon entropies of the Wigner function are calculated for ground and excited stationary states of the Particle-In-A-Box and Harmonic Oscillator model systems and examined as a measure of the localization of the phase-space distribution. We show that their behavior is consistent with that of the sum of the position and momentum space entropies as a function of quantum number. Position-momentum correlation is then analyzed in these systems by defining mutual information between position and momentum variables. This mutual information yields non-zero values, in contrast to the quantum covariance, and increases with quantum number.
Mutual information and information entropies in momentum space are proposed as measures of the nonlocal aspects of information. Singlet and triplet state members of the helium isoelectronic series are employed to examine Coulomb and Fermi correlations, and their manifestations, in both the position and momentum space mutual information measures. The triplet state measures exemplify that the magnitude of the spatial correlations relative to the momentum correlations depends on and may be controlled by the strength of the electronic correlation. The examination of one- and two-electron Shannon entropies in the triplet state series yields a crossover point, which is characterized by a localized momentum density. The mutual information density in momentum space illustrates that this localization is accompanied by strong correlation at small values of p.
In this work, we investigate the reliability of information-theoretic measures based on the electron-density and shape-function, specifically Shannon and Rényi entropies, as descriptors of electronic correlation. By establishing a rigorous decomposition of these entropic measures into additive and nonadditive contributions, supported on a Mulliken-like atomic partition of molecules, we systematically analyze the asymptotic behavior of the entropies at the infinite-internuclear-distance limit to assess the problem of static correlation and extensivity. Our algebraic and numerical analysis reveals several flaws in the use of these density-based descriptors. We demonstrate that for minimal-basis and different theoretical levels, the Shannon and Rényi entropies fail to encode the amount of static correlation conveyed by the underlying wavefunction. Conversely, shape-function Shannon entropies and Rényi entropies (for α≠1α\neq 1α=1) violate extensivity. In larger basis sets, uncorrelated Hartree-Fock densities consistently overestimate entropy compared to sufficiently correlated (e.g., full-valence-CAS) densities. Moreover, the entropies for insufficiently correlated methods violate extensivity. These findings indicate that electron-density-based measures are insufficient for capturing static correlation, suggesting that robust entropic descriptors should be constructed from higher-dimensional Hilbert-space objects.