Mutual Information, Neural Networks and the Renormalization Group

Physical systems differing in their microscopic details often display strikingly similar behaviour when probed at low energies. Those universal properties, largely determining their physical characteristics, are revealed by the powerful renormalization group (RG) procedure, which systematically retains "slow" degrees of freedom and integrates out the rest. However, the important degrees of freedom may be difficult to identify. Here we demonstrate a machine learning (ML) algorithm capable of identifying the relevant degrees of freedom without any prior knowledge about the system. We introduce an artificial neural network based on a model-independent, information-theoretic characterization of a real-space RG procedure, performing this task. We apply the algorithm to classical statistical physics problems in two dimensions.