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arXiv:0803.4377

Is the Heisenberg uncertainty relation really violated?

Masao Kitano

Published Mar 31, 2008• 0 citations
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Abstract

It has been pointed out that for some types of measurement the Heisenberg uncertainty relation seems to be violated. In order to save the situation a new uncertainty relation was proposed by Ozawa. Here we introduce revised definitions of error and disturbance taking into account the gain associated with generalized measurement interactions. With these new definitions, the validity of the Heisenberg inequality is recovered for continuous linear measurement interactions. We also examine the changes in distribution functions caused by the general measurement interaction and clarify the physical meanings of infinitely large errors and disturbances.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.0803.4377

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It has been pointed out that for some types of measurement the Heisenberg uncertainty relation seems to be violated. In order to save the situation a new uncertainty relation was proposed by Ozawa. Here we introduce revised definitions of error and disturbance taking into account the gain associated with generalized measurement interactions. With these new definitions, the validity of the Heisenberg inequality is recovered for continuous linear measurement interactions. We also examine the changes in distribution functions caused by the general measurement interaction and clarify the physical meanings of infinitely large errors and disturbances.
We revisit the definitions of error and disturbance recently used in error-disturbance inequalities derived by Ozawa and others by expressing them in the reduced system space. The interpretation of the definitions as mean-squared deviations relies on an implicit assumption that is generally incompatible with the Bell-Kochen-Specker-Spekkens contextuality theorems, and which results in averaging the deviations over a non-positive-semidefinite joint quasiprobability distribution. For unbiased measurements, the error admits a concrete interpretation as the dispersion in the estimation of the mean induced by the measurement ambiguity. We demonstrate how to directly measure not only this dispersion but also every observable moment with the same experimental data, and thus demonstrate that perfect distributional estimations can have nonzero error according to this measure. We conclude that the inequalities using these definitions do not capture the spirit of Heisenberg's eponymous inequality, but do indicate a qualitatively different relationship between dispersion and disturbance that is appropriate for ensembles being probed by all outcomes of an apparatus. To reconnect with the discussion of Heisenberg, we suggest alternative definitions of error and disturbance that are intrinsic to a single apparatus outcome. These definitions naturally involve the retrodictive and interdictive states for that outcome, and produce complementarity and error-disturbance inequalities that have the same form as the traditional Heisenberg relation.
In [1], Busch et al. showed that it is possible to construct an error-disturbance relation having the same form as Heisenberg's original heuristic definition[2], in contrast to the theory proposed by Ozawa[3] which we and others recently confirmed experimentally[4,5]. With Ozawa's definitions of measurement error and disturbance, a relation of Heisenberg's form is not in general valid, and a new error-disturbance relationship can be derived. Here we explain the different physical significance of the two definitions, and suggest that Ozawa's definition better corresponds to the usual understanding of the disturbance that Heisenberg discussed.
Over the past few years, Heisenberg's error-disturbance uncertainty relation has experienced increased attention since several experimental publications verified the theoretical findings of Ozawa predicting the violation and thus necessary reformulation of Heisenberg's relation. However, soon after their appearance, an alternative theory was presented by Busch and co-workers, which proclaimed the validity of Heisenberg's relation and thus gave rise to heated debates. Here, we present an experimental comparison of the competing approaches by applying them to the same neutron optical measurement apparatus. Empirical results for the different definitions of error and disturbance are presented for special input states and configurations of the apparatus to illustrate the opposing approaches. The inequalities restricting errors and disturbances are particularly emphasized. Despite the strong controversy, in the case of projectively measured qubit observables, both approaches lead to equal outcomes.
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. [Nat. Phys. 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 the Heisenberg error–disturbance relation proposed by Ozawa, which was analyzed in the original experiment, fail in the present context of spin-measurements, and the cause of their failure is identified with the assumptions of unbiased measurement and disturbance. It is also shown that all the universally valid uncertainty relations are derived from Robertson's relation and thus the essence of the uncertainty relation is exhausted by Robertson's relation, as is widely accepted.
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. An alternative 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 experimental parameters in the entire configuration space, the physical behavior of error and disturbance for projective spin-12\frac{1}{2}21​ measurements is illustrated comprehensively. The violation of Heisenberg's original relation, as well as the validity of Ozawa's relation become manifest. In addition, our results conclude that the widespread assumption of a reciprocal relation between error and disturbance is not valid in general.