International Conference in honor of C.R. Rao
on the occasion of his 80th birthday
March 16-19, 2000
University of Texas, San Antonio, Texas

Fisher information, a new paradigm for physics
An invited talk by B. Roy Frieden

The Cramer-Rao inequality was discovered by Professor C.R. Rao (left).  It shows that the ability to know any measured quantity is strictly limited by the amount of Fisher information that is available. This same Fisher information turns out to be the basis for deriving physical laws, and this is no coincidence because physical laws occur in response to measurements.

Recent uses of this approach have resulted in the following predictions [1], [2]:

(1) Free quarks should exist. This has recently been confirmed experimentally.

(2) The Higgs particle, currently unmeasured, should have a mass of no more than 207 GeV.

(3) The Higgs particle has not been found because it is equally probable to be anywhere over all of space-time.  The particle has a flat PDF.

(4) The Higgs mass effect follows completely from considerations of information exchange, and is in no way dependent upon usual ad hoc models such as the Cooper-pair one.

(5) The allowed quark combinations in formation of hadrons are much broader than as given by the "standard model". For example, the combination qqqqq is allowed, whereas this is forbidden by the standard model.

(6) Electrons combine in the same combinations as do quarks in formation of electron clusters and composite fermions.

[1] B.R. Frieden, A. Plastino, "Composite fermion particles and Fisher information", PLA (under review).

[2] B.R. Frieden, A. Plastino, "Higgs mass generation as a reaction to measurement", PRA (under review).