Friday, September 7, 2012

Recommended by us: Violation of the "first" Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle


Synopsis: The Certainty of Uncertainty


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L. A. Rozema et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. (2012)

Violation of Heisenberg’s Measurement-Distrurbance                                           Relationship by Weak Measurements

Lee A. Rozema, Ardavan Darabi, Dylan H. Mahler, Alex Hayat,                                   Yasaman Soudagar, and Aephraim M. Steinberg
Published September 6, 2012

When first taking quantum mechanics courses, students learn about Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which is often presented as a statement about the intrinsic uncertainty that a quantum system must possess. Yet Heisenberg originally formulated his principle in terms of the “observer effect”: a relationship between the precision of a measurement and the disturbance it creates, as when a photon measures an electron’s position. Although the former version is rigorously proven, the latter is less general and—as recently shown—mathematically incorrect. In a paper in Physical Review Letters, Lee Rozema and colleagues at the University of Toronto, Canada, experimentally demonstrate that a measurement can in fact violate Heisenberg’s original precision-disturbance relationship. (Continue to read on physics.aps.org)
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At this link you can find the preprint on arxiv: 

Violation of Heisenberg's Measurement-Disturbance Relationship by Weak Measurements
Lee A. Rozema, Ardavan Darabi, Dylan H. Mahler, Alex Hayat, Yasaman Soudagar, and Aephraim M. Steinberg.

Abstract: While there is a rigorously proven relationship about uncertainties intrinsic to any quantum system, often referred to as "Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle", Heisenberg originally formulated his ideas in terms of a relationship between the precision of a measurement and the disturbance it must create. Although this latter relationship is not rigorously proven, it is commonly believed (and taught) as an aspect of the broader uncertainty principle. Here, we experimentally observe a violation of Heisenberg's "measurement-disturbance relationship", using weak measurements to characterize a quantum system before and after it interacts with a measurement apparatus. Our experiment implements a 2010 proposal of Lund and Wiseman to con rm a revised measurement- disturbance relationship derived by Ozawa in 2003. Its results have broad implications for the foundations of quantum mechanics and for practical issues in quantum mechanics.              

              

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