Mutual information disentangles interactions from changing environments

TL;DR

This paper presents a method using mutual information to distinguish between internal interactions within a system and external environmental influences, even when the environment is unobserved.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach leveraging mutual information to disentangle internal couplings from external environmental effects in complex systems.

Findings

Mutual information can separate internal interactions from environmental influences.

The method works even with unobserved, changing environments.

Applicable as a general technique for analyzing complex systems.

Abstract

Real-world systems are characterized by complex interactions of their internal degrees of freedom, while living in ever-changing environments whose net effect is to act as additional couplings. Here, we introduce a paradigmatic interacting model in a switching, but unobserved, environment. We show that the limiting properties of the mutual information of the system allow for a disentangling of these two sources of couplings. Further, our approach might stand as a general method to discriminate complex internal interactions from equally complex changing environments.