## 1 Introduction: \"Information is Physical\"  
During the last few decades, theoretical advances in (non-relativistic) quantum mechanics have provided novel insights into several physical and technological fields, and have also allowed us to predict new effects and to invent new technological applications. In particular, various quantum correlation effects (e.g., Entanglement [1, 2] and the newly discovered Quantum Discord [2, 3, 4]), being succinctly characteristic features of quantum mechanics, play a significant role here. Note that quantum coherence and quantum correlations, in particular entanglement, are also the basic ingredients of Quantum Information Theory (QIT); see [2, 5]. Moreover, also in the context of classical information theory holds, as [PERSON] puts is: \"Information is Physical\" [6]. The focus of this paper is on a new scattering effect accompanying elementary collisions between two quantum systems--a neutron and a proton (or H atom)--in which H interacts with a non-classical environment, say \(\mathcal{E}\). In contrast to the classical case, a quantum \(\mathcal{E}\) will be shown to cause striking effects of energy and momentum transfers. Evidence of a recently discovered \"anomalous\" scattering effect is presented and discussed--excess energy transfer, (equivalently: momentum-transfer deficit, or reduced effective mass of the scatterer). In the examples under consideration below, the well-known technique of incoherent inelastic neutron scattering (INS) of thermal neutrons is applied. Note that INS clearly belongs to non-relativistic physics, and that the scattering is incoherent [7; 8]; see also Appendix A. In an example, we consider single H\({}_{2}\) molecules in multi-walled carbon nanotubes, where H-neutron collisions result in translation along the nanotube axis. Interpreting the INS data with conventional theory [8; 9; 10; 11], the measurements indicate a striking mass deficit of H\({}_{2}\): it appears to be only \(M=0.64\) atomic mass units (a.m.u.) --in blatant contradiction to its well known value \(M=2\) a.m.u. To reveal the specific reason of the failure of the conventional view, it is necessary to consider certain important experimental aspects of the neutron scattering spectrometer and the concrete measuring procedure in more detail. Indeed, it is necessary to be aware of the following questions: What is, in fact, directly measured? Moreover, what is theoretically deduced from the experimental data, and how? The aforementioned effect is exploited and interpreted \"from first principles\" in Sections 5-8, which constitute the theoretical part of the paper. The experimental INS results find a direct qualitative interpretation in the frame of modern quantum thermodynamics (QTD) and quantum information theory (QIT). Here, the concepts of entanglement, quantum discord and quantum conditional entropy appear to be essential. A particular feature of the theoretical treatment is that it gives us a physical picture based on quantum correlations, rather than on quantum mechanisms. To facilitate understanding, the following aspects concerning quantum correlations should be pointed out. Quantum correlations of electrons, being caused by the indistinguishability of identical particles, are already well known in traditional physics and chemistry of atoms, molecules and solids. These are not considered in this paper. In contrast, quantum correlations between non-identical particles (e.g., protons and neutrons) are all but unknown in most fields, like, e.g., chemistry, molecular biology and applied material sciences, but they play a central role here. They are also unknown in standard non-relativistic neutron scattering theory [8; 9; 10; 11]. The paper's theoretical part is based on concepts of QIT [5] and QTD. Our analysis makes contact with studies of quantum entanglement and its extension and/or generalization within the theoretical framework known as quantumness of correlations, in short QoC.