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Validity of just a few physical conditions comprising the Einstein Equivalence Principle (EEP) suffices to ensure that gravity can be understood as space-time geometry. EEP is therefore subject to an ongoing experimental verification, with…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2015-02-04 Magdalena Zych , Caslav Brukner

The relationship between Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and the Free-Energy Principle (FEP) remains unresolved, particularly with respect to how integrated information, proposed as the intrinsic substrate of consciousness, behaves…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2025-10-07 Teruki Mayama , Sota Shimizu , Yuki Takano , Dai Akita , Hirokazu Takahashi

Given a chemical reaction going from reactant (R) to the product (P) on a potential energy surface (PES) and a collective variable (CV) that discriminates between R and P, one can define a free-energy profile (FEP) as the logarithm of the…

Bayesian inference is a widely used statistical method. The free energy and generalization loss, which are used to estimate the accuracy of Bayesian inference, are known to be small in singular models that do not have a unique optimal…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-12-16 Shuya Nagayasu , Sumio Watanabe

Collective intelligence emerges across biological, physical, and artificial systems without central coordination, yet a unifying principle governing such behaviour remains elusive. The Free Energy Principle explains how individual agents…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-01 Djamel Bouchaffra , Faycal Ykhlef , Mustapha Lebbah , Hanane Azzag

Active inference, a corollary of the free energy principle, is a formal way of describing the behavior of certain kinds of random dynamical systems that have the appearance of sentience. In this chapter, we describe how active inference…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-10-11 Noor Sajid , Lancelot Da Costa , Thomas Parr , Karl Friston

We address the problem of planning under uncertainty, where an agent must choose actions that not only achieve desired outcomes but also reduce uncertainty. Traditional methods often treat exploration and exploitation as separate…

A central challenge for intelligent agents in an uncertain world is striking the right balance between utility maximization and resource use, not only for external movement but also for internal computation. Existing theories of control…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-19 Itzel Olivos-Castillo , Paul Schrater , Xaq Pitkow

We show how any system with morphological degrees of freedom and locally limited free energy will, under the constraints of the free energy principle, evolve toward a neuromorphic morphology that supports hierarchical computations in which…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2023-02-28 Chris Fields , Karl Friston , James F. Glazebrook , Michael Levin , Antonino Marcianò

Quantum coherences characterise the ability of particles to quantum mechanically interfere within some given distances. In the context of noisy many-body quantum systems these coherences can fluctuate. A simple toy model to study such…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-04-03 Ludwig Hruza , Denis Bernard

We present an approach that extends the theory of targeted free energy perturbation (TFEP) to calculate free energy differences and free energy surfaces at an accurate quantum mechanical level of theory from a cheaper reference potential.…

Computational Physics · Physics 2021-11-15 Andrea Rizzi , Paolo Carloni , Michele Parrinello

We provide a theoretical framework to describe the dynamics of a free-electron beam interacting with quantized bound systems in arbitrary electromagnetic environments. This expands the quantum optics toolbox to incorporate free-electron…

The maximum entropy principle (MEP) apparently allows us to derive, or justify, fundamental results of equilibrium statistical mechanics. Because of this, a school of thought considers the MEP as a powerful and elegant way to make…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-12-09 Gennaro Auletta , Lamberto Rondoni , Angelo Vulpiani

Finding optimal solutions to combinatorial optimization problems is pivotal in both scientific and technological domains, within academic research and industrial applications. A considerable amount of effort has been invested in the…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2024-12-13 Zi-Song Shen , Feng Pan , Yao Wang , Yi-Ding Men , Wen-Biao Xu , Man-Hong Yung , Pan Zhang

We offer new methods for characterizing general closed and convex quantum resource theories, including dynamic ones, based on entropic concepts and operational tasks. We propose a resource-theoretic generalization of the quantum conditional…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-05-28 Kaiyuan Ji , Eric Chitambar

Estimating the free energy in molecular simulation requires, implicitly or explicitly, counting how many times the system is observed in a finite region. If the simulation is biased by an external potential, the weight of the configurations…

Chemical Physics · Physics 2021-12-22 Matteo Carli , Alessandro Laio

The concept of free energy has its origins in 19th century thermodynamics, but has recently found its way into the behavioral and neural sciences, where it has been promoted for its wide applicability and has even been suggested as a…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2020-12-08 Sebastian Gottwald , Daniel A. Braun

The goal of these lecture notes is to review the problem of free energy minimization as a unified framework underlying the definition of maximum entropy modelling, generalized Bayesian inference, learning with latent variables, statistical…

Signal Processing · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-12-01 Sharu Theresa Jose , Osvaldo Simeone

We formulate the computational processes of perception in the framework of the principle of least action by postulating the theoretical action as a time integral of the free energy in the brain sciences. The free energy principle is…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2019-02-21 Chang Sub Kim

We demonstrate that the dynamics of an open quantum system can be calculated efficiently and with predefined error, provided a basis exists in which the system-environment interactions are local and hence obey the Lieb-Robinson bound. We…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2015-03-19 Giulia Gualdi , Christiane P. Koch