metich no. 2 pp. 123-137 1976 INFORMATION STUDY OF ATOMIC NUCLET. INFORMATION FOR PROTON-NEUTRON COMPOSITION D. Bonchev, T. Peev, B. Russeva Department of Physical Chemistry, Higher School of Chemical Technology, 8005 Burgas, Bulgaria (received: January 1976) Abstract Equations have been derived, expressing the information content of the atomic nuclei as a function of the mass number, the number of neutrons, and the isodifferent number, Some possible applications to the nuclei systematics and the stu- ay of the anelogy between nuclear and electron structure have been shown, A correlation has been found between the informa- tion content and the binding energy of the isodifferent ato- mic nuclei. 1, Introduction Any system possessing a determined structure contains some quantity of information. The information content of aif ferent syatens is usually determined by the Shannon’ equa tion |: T= -yipylogypy —bits/element (a) where T is the average quantity of information in bits, cor- responding to an eleuent of the examined systems p, = N,/N is the probability of a randomly chosen element of the exa- mined system, consisting of N elements, to be in a definite (i-th) group of elements, Ny in number, The “structural” information of the nonliving systems (molecules, atoms, atomic nuclei) introduced by equation (4.1) plays a role of an additional statistical characteris. tic connected with the degree of complexity of the sysvems.= 124 = This makes it particularly useful for different classifica- tional aims, as well as in establishing analogies between systems of different nature. No data is available in literature for information in- vestigations of atomic nuclei, However, there are no princi- ple obstacles for such investigations, since atomic nuclei possess a determined structure, and they are constructed of two distinct types of structural elements - protons and neu- trons. 1n the light of aforementioned the aim of the present work is to apply the information theory in investigation of atomic nuclei, and in particular, in deriving some analyti- cal expressions for the information for proton-neutron compo- sition carried by each atomic nucleus. This information quan- tity may be useful in analyzing various problems, and, above all, in the interpretation of some nuclear properties, as well as in the attemps at a nuclei systematics by analogy with the periodic table. Information for Atomic Nuc: Ne sition. General Analysis, The probability for a randomly chosen elementary par- ticle, from a nucleus having mass number A and possessing 2 aad protons and n neutrons being a proton, is p, = Ze le A 28 and alternatively the probability of being a neutron is py = B= 42, wnere f= n-z = A-2z, Then each nucleon A 2a will carry an average quantity of information for proton-neu- tron composition of the atomic nuclei: tm. f le, 2.2 le, 2 bits/nucleon A A A A (241) The information defined according to equation (2.1) was cal- culated for all known 2f -stable nuclides up to “2381, taken from the chart of Nuclides 7.= 125 - oan "Me “yw 0 50 190 150 200 Fig.1 Dependence of the average information for proton-neu- tron composition per nucleon on the mass number A of the 2p -stable nuclei As can be seen from fig.1, the average information for proton-neutron composition alters regularly with increase of A. The general form of the curve is zigzag, but the values of a fluctuate around a mean value, near to 1 bit. The average information carried by one nucleon is exactly 1 bit for all atomic nuclei having equal number of protons and neutrons. The total information for proton-neutron composition expres- sed in bits for these 15 2p -stable nuclei: Tap = Al, = Alg,A - 2lg,z - nlgon bits/nucleus...(2.2) will be exactly equal to the mass number A: for a= n, I,, = A bits/nucleus; I, = 1 bit/nucleon. .(2.3) Since the number of the neutrons grows with the in- crease of the mass number more rapidly than that of the pro-