We present a new geometric formulation of uncertainty relation valid for any quantum measurements of statistical nature. Owing to its simplicity and tangibility, our relation is universally valid and experimentally viable. Although our relation violates the na{ï}ve non-commutativity bound $\hbar/2$ for the measurement of position and momentum, the spirit of the uncertainty principle still stands strong. Our relation entails, among others, the Ozawa relation as a corollary, and also reduces seamlessly to the standard Kennard-Robertson relation when the measurement is non-informative.
In this comment we show that the experimental results for a universally valid uncertainty relation in ref.[J. Erhart et al. Nat. Phys.(2012)10.1038/nphys2194]cannot be justified. The experiments cannot be recognized to establish a violation of the Heisenberg-type uncertainty relation suggested by Ozawa[Phys. Lett. A318(2003)21, Phys. Rev. A67(2003)042105].
A universally valid uncertainty relation proposed by Ozawa is re-investigated under for the generalized equation of motion with some boundary condition. Necessary conditions for violation (lessening) of the Heisenberg-type uncertainty relation is discussed in detail. An experimental test of lessening of the generalized uncertainty relation due to the boundary condition is shown by re-analyzing the data measuring electron densities of hydrogen molecule encapsulated in a cage of fullerene C60.
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that the product of the noise in a position measurement and the momentum disturbance caused by that measurement should be no less than the limit set by Planck's constant, hbar/2, as demonstrated by Heisenberg's thought experiment using a gamma-ray microscope. Here I show that this common assumption is false: a universally valid trade-off relation between the noise and the disturbance has an additional correlation term, which is redundant when the intervention brought by the measurement is independent of the measured object, but which allows the noise…
A universally valid Heisenberg uncertainty relation is proposed by combining the universally valid error-disturbance uncertainty relation of Ozawa with the relation of Robertson. This form of the uncertainty relation, which is defined with the same mathematical rigor as the relations of Kennard and Robertson, incorporates both of the intrinsic quantum fluctuations and measurement effects.
The uncertainty principle generally prohibits determination of certain pairs of quantum mechanical observables with arbitrary precision and forms the basis of indeterminacy in quantum mechanics. It was Heisenberg who used the famous gamma-ray microscope thought experiment to illustrate this indeterminacy. A lower bound was set for the product of the measurement error of an observable and the disturbance caused by the measurement. Later on, the uncertainty relation was reformulated in terms of standard deviations, which focuses solely on indeterminacy of predictions and neglects unavoidable rec…
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle was originally posed for the limit of the accuracy of simultaneous measurement of non-commuting observables as stating that canonically conjugate observables can be measured simultaneously only with the constraint that the product of their mean errors should be no less than a limit set by Planck's constant. However, Heisenberg with the subsequent completion by Kennard has long been credited only with a constraint for state preparation represented by the product of the standard deviations. Here, we show that Heisenberg actually proved the constraint for the ac…
A numerical illustration of a universally valid Heisenberg uncertainty relation, which was proposed recently, is presented by using the experimental data on spin-measurements by J. Erhart, et al.[ Nature Phys. {\bf 8}, 185 (2012)]. This uncertainty relation is closely related to a modified form of the Arthurs-Kelly uncertainty relation which is also tested by the spin-measurements. The universally valid Heisenberg uncertainty relation always holds, but both the modified Arthurs-Kelly uncertainty relation and Heisenberg's error-disturbance relation proposed by Ozawa, which was analyzed in the o…
We study universally valid uncertainty relations in general quantum systems described by general $σ$-finite von Neumann algebras to foster developing quantitative analysis in quantum systems with infinite degrees of freedom such as quantum fields. We obtain the most stringent measurement-disturbance relation ever, applicable to systems with infinite degrees of freedom, by refining the proofs given by Branciard and one of the authors (MO) for systems with finite degrees of freedom. In our proof the theory of the standard form of von Neumann algebras plays a crucial role, incorporating with meas…
In quantum physics, measurement error and disturbance were first naively thought to be simply constrained by the Heisenberg uncertainty relation. Later, more rigorous analysis showed that the error and disturbance satisfy more subtle inequalities. Several versions of universally valid error-disturbance relations (EDR) have already been obtained and experimentally verified in the regimes where naive applications of the Heisenberg uncertainty relation failed. However, these EDRs were formulated for discrete measurements. In this paper, we consider continuous measurement processes and obtain new …
Universally valid uncertainty relations are proven in a model independent formulation for inherent and unavoidable extra noises in arbitrary joint measurements on single systems, from which Heisenber's original uncertainty relation is proven valid for any joint measurements with statistically independent noises.
So-called quantum limits and their achievement are important themes in physics. Heisenberg's uncertainty relations are the most famous of them but are not universally valid and violated in general. In recent years, the reformulation of uncertainty relations is actively studied, and several universally valid uncertainty relations are derived. On the other hand, several measuring models, in particular, spin-1/2 measurements, are constructed and quantitatively examined. However, there are not so many studies on simultaneous measurements of position and momentum despite their importance. Here we s…
Defining and measuring the error of a measurement is one of the most fundamental activities in experimental science. However, quantum theory shows a peculiar difficulty in extending the classical notion of root-mean-square (rms) error to quantum measurements. A straightforward generalization based on the noise-operator was used to reformulate Heisenberg's uncertainty relation for the accuracy of simultaneous measurements to be universally valid and made the conventional formulation testable to observe its violation. Recently, its reliability was examined based on an anomaly that the error vani…
Recently, universally valid uncertainty relations have been established to set a precision limit for any instruments given a disturbance constraint in a form more general than the one originally proposed by Heisenberg. One of them leads to a quantitative generalization of the Wigner-Araki-Yanase theorem on the precision limit of measurements under conservation laws. Applying this, a rigorous lower bound is obtained for the gate error probability of physical implementations of Hadamard gates on a standard qubit of a spin 1/2 system by interactions with control fields or ancilla systems obeying …
Complementarity restricts the accuracy with which incompatible quantum observables can be jointly measured. Despite popular conception, the Heisenberg uncertainty relation does not quantify this principle. We report the experimental verification of universally valid complementarity relations, including an improved relation derived here. We exploit Einstein-Poldolsky-Rosen correlations between two photonic qubits, to jointly measure incompatible observables of one. The product of our measurement inaccuracies is low enough to violate the widely used, but not universally valid, Arthurs-Kelly rela…
We formulate and prove a new, universally valid uncertainty relation for the necessary errors bar widths in any approximate joint measurement of position and momentum.
Often, one would like to determine some observable A, but can only measure some (hopefully related) observable M. This can arise, for example, in quantum eavesdropping, or when the research lab budget isn't large enough for that 100% efficient photodetector. It also arises whenever one tries to jointly determine two complementary observables via some measurement M. This raises three natural questions: (i) What is the best possible estimate of A from M ? ; (ii) How 'noisy' is such an estimate ? ; and (iii) Are there any universally valid uncertainty relations for joint estimates ? Quite general…
The uncertainty relation formulated by Heisenberg in 1927 describes a trade-off between the error of a measurement of one observable and the disturbance caused on another complementary observable so that their product should be no less than a limit set by Planck's constant. In 1980, Braginsky, Vorontsov, and Thorne claimed that this relation leads to a sensitivity limit for gravitational wave detectors. However, in 1988 a model of position measurement was constructed that breaks both this limit and Heisenberg's relation. Here, we discuss the problems as to how we reformulate Heisenberg's relat…
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle was originally formulated in 1927 as a quantitative relation between the "mean error" of a measurement of one observable and the disturbance thereby caused on another observable. Heisenberg derived this famous relation under an additional assumption on quantum measurements that has been abandoned in the modern theory, and its universal validity was questioned in a debate on the sensitivity limit to gravitational-wave detectors in 1980s. A universally valid form of the error-disturbance relation was shown to be derived in the modern framework of general quantu…
The uncertainty principle being a cornerstone of quantum mechanics, it is surprising that in nearly 90 years there have been no direct tests of measurement uncertainty relations. This lacuna was due to the absence of two essential ingredients: appropriate measures of measurement error (and disturbance), and precise formulations of such relations that are {\em universally valid}and {\em directly testable}. We formulate two distinct forms of direct tests, based on different measures of error. We present a prototype protocol for a direct test of measurement uncertainty relations in terms of {\em …
In its original formulation, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle dealt with the relationship between the error of a quantum measurement and the thereby induced disturbance on the measured object. Meanwhile, Heisenberg's heuristic arguments have turned out to be correct only for special cases. A new universally valid relation was derived by Ozawa in 2003. Here, we demonstrate that Ozawa's predictions hold for projective neutron-spin measurements. The experimental inaccessibility of error and disturbance claimed elsewhere has been overcome using a tomographic method. By a systematic variation of …
The Heisenberg and Mandelstam-Tamm time-energy uncertainty relations are analyzed. The conlusion resulting from this analysis is that within the Quantum Mechanics of Schrödinger and von Neumann, the status of these relations can not be considered as the same as the status of the position-momentum uncertainty relations, which are rigorous. The conclusion is that the time--energy uncertainty relations can not be considered as universally valid.
We discuss a discrete-event simulation approach, which has been shown to give a unified cause-and-effect description of many quantum optics and single-neutron interferometry experiments. The event-based simulation algorithm does not require the knowledge of the solution of a wave equation of the whole system, yet reproduces the corresponding statistical distributions by generating detection events one-by-one. It is showm that single-particle interference and entanglement, two important quantum phenomena, emerge via information exchange between individual particles and devices such as beam spli…
Our investigation of the results of the neutron spin experiment by Ehhart et al. demonstrates that their results cannot be understood in accordance with common sense. For example, their results obtained with different measurement errors are equal to each other for a same neutron state. This is because their measurement values have a large systematic error due to adopting an incorrect measurement-value operator, which is the operator that gives the measurement values of the measured observable. They asserted that their results confirmed the validity of a universally valid uncertainty relation p…
Tight qubit uncertainty relations studied through weak values in neutron interferometry
Atominstitut, TU Wien（维也纳工业大学原子研究所）；Department of Applied Physics, Hokkaido University（北海道大学应用物理系）；Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Hiroshima University（广岛大学先进理工学研究科）；Institut Laue Langevin（劳厄-朗之万研究所）
The Heisenberg's error-disturbance relation is a cornerstone of quantum physics. It was recently shown to be not universally valid and two different approaches to reformulate it were proposed.The first one focuses on how error and disturbance of two observables, A and B, depend on a particular quantum state. The second one asks how a joint measurement of A and B affects their eigenstates. Previous experiments focused on the first approach. Here, we focus on the second one. Firstly, we propose and implement an extendible method for quantum walk-based joint measurements of noisy Pauli operators …
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle has been understood to set a limitation on measurements; however, the long-standing mathematical formulation established by Heisenberg, Kennard, and Robertson does not allow such an interpretation. Recently, a new relation was found to give a universally valid relation between noise and disturbance in general quantum measurements, and it has become clear that the new relation plays a role of the first principle to derive various quantum limits on measurement and information processing in a unified treatment. This paper examines the above development on the no…
General characterizations of physical measurements are discussed within the framework of the classical information theory. The uncertainty relation for simultaneous measurements of two physical observables is defined in this framework for generalized dynamic systems governed by a Sturm--Liouville type of equation of motion. In the first step, the reduction of Kennard--Robertson type uncertainties due to boundary conditions with a mean-square error is discussed quantitatively with reference to the information entropy. Several concrete examples of generalized uncertainty relations are given. The…
We discuss the uncertainty relation for the azimuthal angle $ϕ$ and the $z$-component of the angular momentum $L_z$. To this end we derive the uncertainty relation for an arbitrary pair of observables and discuss the conditions for its validity. By means of a simple parameter-dependent state we illustrate the well known fact that the standard uncertainty relation for the coordinate and its conjugate momentum does not apply the pair of observables $ϕ-L_z$. This analysis is motivated by a discussion of the motion of an electron in a constant magnetic field appeared recently in this journal (Eur.…
The uncertainty relation, as one of the fundamental principles of quantum physics, captures the incompatibility of noncommuting observables in the preparation of quantum states. In this work, we derive two strong and universal uncertainty relations for $N(N\ge2)$ observables with discrete and bounded spectra, one in multiplicative form and the other in additive form. To verify their validity, for illustration, we implement in the spin-1/2 system an experiment with single-photon measurement. The experimental results exhibit the validity and robustness of these uncertainty relations, and indicat…
We derive new inequalities for the probabilities of projective measurements in mutually unbiased bases of a qudit system. These inequalities lead to wider ranges of validity and tighter bounds on entropic uncertainty inequalities previously derived in the literature.
Application of the uncertainty principle to conditional measurements is investigated, and found to be valid for measurements on separated sub-systems. In light of this, an apparent violation of the uncertainty principle obtained by Kim and Shih in their realization of Popper's experiment (quant-ph/9905039) is explained through analogy with a simple optical system.
We show that for fermion states, measurements of any two finite outcome particle quantum numbers (e.g.\ spin) are not constrained by a minimum total uncertainty. We begin by defining uncertainties in terms of the outputs of a measurement apparatus. This allows us to compare uncertainties between multi-particle states of distinguishable and indistinguishable particles. Entropic uncertainty relations are derived for both distinguishable and indistinguishable particles. We then derive upper bounds on the minimum total uncertainty for bosons and fermions. These upper bounds apply to any pair of pa…
The time energy uncertainty relation has been a controversial issue since the advent of quantum theory, with respect to appropriate formalisation, validity and possible meanings. A comprehensive account of the development of this subject up to the 1980s is provided by a combination of the reviews of Jammer (1974), Bauer and Mello (1978), and Busch (1990). More recent reviews are concerned with different specific aspects of the subject. The purpose of this chapter is to show that different types of time energy uncertainty relation can indeed be deduced in specific contexts, but that there is no…
The Heisenberg inequality ΔX ΔP \geq \hbar/2 can be replaced by an exact equality, for suitably chosen measures of position and momentum uncertainty, which is valid for all wavefunctions. The statistics of complementary observables are thus connected by an ``exact'' uncertainty relation.
We postulate the existence of a universal uncertainty relation between the quantum and classical mutual informations between pairs of quantum systems. Specifically, we propose that the sum of the classical mutual information, determined by two mutually unbiased pairs of observables, never exceeds the quantum mutual information. We call this the complementary-quantum correlation (CQC) relation and prove its validity for pure states, for states with one maximally mixed subsystem, and for all states when one measurement is minimally disturbing. We provide results of a Monte Carlo simulation sugge…
The effects of any quantum measurement can be described by a collection of measurement operators {M_m} acting on the quantum state of the measured system. However, the Hilbert space formalism tends to obscure the relationship between the measurement results and the physical properties of the measured system. In this paper, a characterization of measurement operators in terms of measurement resolution and disturbance is developed. It is then possible to formulate uncertainty relations for the measurement process that are valid for arbitrary input states. The motivation of these concepts is expl…
We experimentally test the error-disturbance uncertainty relation (EDR) in generalized, strength-variable measurement of a single photon polarization qubit, making use of weak measurement that keeps the initial signal state practically unchanged. We demonstrate that Heisenberg's EDR is violated, yet Ozawa's and Branciard's EDRs are valid throughout the range of our measurement strength.
In this study, we explore the validity of the original Heisenberg position- momentum uncertainty relation for a macroscopic harmonic oscillator interacting with environmental micro particles. Our results show that, in the quasi-classical situation, the original uncertainty relation does not hold when the number of particles in the environment is small. Nonetheless, increasing the environmental degrees of freedom resolves the violation in the region of our investigation.
We ask which is the best strategy to reveal uncertainty relations between comple- mentary observables of a continuous variable system for coarse-grained measurements. This leads to the derivation of new uncertainty relations for coarse-grained measurements that are always valid, even for detectors with low precision. These relations should be particularly relevant in experimental demonstrations of squeezing in quantum optics, quantum state reconstruction, and the development of trustworthy entanglement criteria.
In this letter we analyze the effect of the spin dimensionality of a physical system in two mathematical formulations of the uncertainty principle: a generalized Heisenberg uncertainty relation valid for all antisymmetric N-fermion wavefunctions, and the Fisher-information- based uncertainty relation valid for all antisymmetric N-fermion wavefunctions of central potentials. The accuracy of these spin-modified uncertainty relations is examined for all atoms from Hydrogen to Lawrencium in a self-consistent framework.
It is shown that the well-defined unbiased measurement or disturbance of a dynamical variable is not maintained for the precise measurement of the conjugate variable, independently of uncertainty relations. The conditionally valid uncertainty relations on the basis of those additional assumptions, which include most of the familiar Heisenberg-type relations, thus become singular for the precise measurement. We clarify some contradicting conclusions in the literature concerning those conditionally valid uncertainty relations: The failure of a naive Heisenberg-type error-disturbance relation and…
In the framework of the generalized uncertainty principle, the position and momentum operators obey the modified commutation relation $[X,P]=i\hbar\left(1+βP^2\right)$ where $β$ is the deformation parameter. Since the validity of the uncertainty relation for the Shannon entropies proposed by Beckner, Bialynicki-Birula, and Mycieslki (BBM) depends on both the algebra and the used representation, we show that using the formally self-adjoint representation, i.e., $X=x$ and $P=\tan\left(\sqrtβp\right)/\sqrtβ$ where $[x,p]=i\hbar$, the BBM inequality is still valid in the form $S_x+S_p\geq1+\lnπ$ a…
Three remarks concerning the form and the range of validity of the state-extended characteristic uncertainty relations (URs) are presented. A more general definition of the uncertainty matrix for pure and mixed states is suggested. Some new URs are provided.
Modified uncertainty principle and non-commutative variables may phenomenologically account for quantum gravity effects, independently of the considered theory of quantum gravity. We show that quantum fluids enable experimental analogs and direct tests of the modified uncertainty principle expected to be valid at the Planck scale. We consider a quantum clock realized by a long-lasting quantum fluid wave-packet orbiting in a trapping potential. We investigate the hydrodynamics of the Schrödinger equation encompassing kinetic terms due to Planck-scale effects. We study the resulting generalized …
Uncertainty relations give upper bounds on the accuracy by which the outcomes of two incompatible measurements can be predicted. While established uncertainty relations apply to cases where the predictions are based on purely classical data (e.g., a description of the system's state before measurement), an extended relation which remains valid in the presence of quantum information has been proposed recently [Berta et al., Nat. Phys. 6, 659 (2010)]. Here, we generalize this uncertainty relation to one formulated in terms of smooth entropies. Since these entropies measure operational quantities…
