Open Problems within Nonextensive Statistical Mechanics

Nonextensive statistical mechanics has developed into an important framework for modeling the thermodynamics of complex systems and the information of complex signals. To mark the 80th birthday of the field’s founder, Constantino Tsallis, a review of open problems that can stimulate future research is provided. Over the thirty-year development of NSM, a variety of criticisms have been published ranging from questions about the justification for generalizing the entropy function to the interpretation of the generalizing parameter q. While these criticisms have been addressed in the past and the breadth of applications has demonstrated the utility of the NSM methodologies, this review provides insights into how the field can continue to improve the understanding and application of complex system models. The review starts by grounding q-statistics within scale-shape distributions and then frames a series of open problems for investigation. The open problems include using the degrees of freedom to quantify the difference between entropy and its generalization, clarifying the physical interpretation of the parameter q, improving the definition of the generalized product using multidimensional analysis, defining a generalized Fourier transform applicable to signal processing applications, and re-examining the normalization of nonextensive entropy. This review concludes with a proposal that the shape parameter is a candidate for defining the statistical complexity of a system.