Abstract

This work presents a discussion about the application of the Kolmogorov; López-Ruiz, Mancini, and Calbet ; and Shiner, Davison, and Landsberg complexity measures to a common situation in physics described by the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution. The first idea about complexity measure started in computer science and was proposed by Kolmogorov, calculated similarly to the informational entropy. Kolmogorov measure when applied to natural phenomena, presents higher values associated with disorder and lower to order. However, it is considered that high complexity must be associated to intermediate states between order and disorder. Consequently, LMC and SDL measures were defined and used in attempts to model natural phenomena but with the inconvenience of being defined for discrete probability distributions defined over finite intervals. Here, adapting the definitions to a continuous variable, the three measures are applied to the known Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution describing thermal neutron velocity in a power reactor, allowing extension of complexity measures to a continuous physical situation and giving possible discussions about the phenomenon.