Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 229, 773–785 (2020)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2020-900196-x

Regular Article

Advantages of q-logarithm representation over q-exponential representation from the sense of scale and shift on nonlinear systems

¹ Graduate School of Engineering, Chiba University, 1-33, Yayoi-cho, Inage-ku, Chiba 263-8522, Japan
² Graduate School of Engineering, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Gokiso-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya 466-8555, Japan
³ Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi (ISC-CNR) c/o, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, Torino 10129, Italy

^a e-mail: suyari@faculty.chiba-u.jp

Received: 16 September 2019
Received in final form: 13 December 2019
Published online: 12 March 2020

Abstract

Addition and subtraction of observed values can be computed under the obvious and implicit assumption that the scale unit of measurement should be the same for all arguments, which is valid even for any nonlinear systems. This paper starts with the distinction between exponential and non-exponential family in the sense of the scale unit of measurement. In the simplest nonlinear model dy∕dx = y^q, it is shown how typical effects such as rescaling and shift emerge in the nonlinear systems and affect observed data. Based on the present results, the two representations, namely the q-exponential and the q-logarithm ones, are proposed. The former is for rescaling, the latter for unified understanding with a fixed scale unit. As applications of these representations, the corresponding entropy and the general probability expression for unified understanding with a fixed scale unit are presented. For the theoretical study of nonlinear systems, q-logarithm representation is shown to have significant advantages over q-exponential representation.