Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle
By Matthew C. Santos. 2006
295 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is usually taken to express a limitation of operational possibilities imposed by quantum mechanics. Here we demonstrate that the full content of this principle also includes its positive role as a condition ensuring that mutually exclusive experimental options can be reconciled if an appropriate trade-off is accepted. The uncertainty principle is shown to appear in three manifestations, in the form of uncertainty relations: for the widths of the position and momentum distributions in any quantum state; for the inaccuracies of any joint measurement of these quantities; and for the inaccuracy of a measurement of one of the quantities and the ensuing disturbance in the distribution of the other quantity. Whilst conceptually distinct, these three kinds of uncertainty relations are shown to be closely related formally. Finally, we survey models and experimental implementations of joint measurements of position and momentum and comment briefly on the status of experimental tests of the uncertainty principle.
Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, History and Philosophy of Science, Radiation
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/65802b80c25d3379698b980cc2c2e92b670b3fdc
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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
- Paul Busch
- Reinhard F. Werner
- Anton Zeilinger
- Xiao-song Ma
- Johannes Kofler
- Pekka Lahti
- John Watrous
- Karol Zyczkowski
In Radiation
Citations in the corpus
- Colloquium: Quantum root-mean-square error and measurement uncertainty relations (2013, background): “As a byproduct we will 1 For a review of this development we refer the interested reader to (Busch et al., 2007). see how the apparent conflict over Heisenberg’s principle is resolved.”
- Delayed-choice gedanken experiments and their realizations (2014, background): “…momentum distributions in any quantum state, (ii) for the inaccuracies of any unsharp joint measurement of both quantities, and (iii) for the inaccuracy of ameasurement of one of the quantities and the resulting disturbance in the distribution of the other one (Busch, Heinonen, and Lahti, 2007).”