Historically, the element of uncertainty in quantum mechanics has been expressed through mathematical identities called uncertainty relations, a great many of which continue to be discovered. These relations use diverse measures to quantify uncertainty (and joint uncertainty). In this paper we use operational information-theoretic principles to identify the common essence of all such measures, thereby defining measure-independent notions of uncertainty and joint uncertainty. We find that most existing entropic uncertainty relations use measures of joint uncertainty that yield themselves to a small class of operational interpretations. Our notion relaxes this restriction, revealing previously unexplored joint uncertainty measures. To illustrate the utility of our formalism, we derive an uncertainty relation based on one such new measure. We also use our formalism to gain insight into the conditions under which measure-independent uncertainty relations can be found.
Historically, the element of uncertainty in quantum mechanics has been expressed through mathematical identities called uncertainty relations, a great many of which continue to be discovered. These relations use diverse measures to quantify uncertainty (and joint uncertainty). In this paper we use operational information-theoretic principles to identify the common essence of all such measures, thereby defining measure-independent notions of uncertainty and joint uncertainty. We find that most existing entropic uncertainty relations use measures of joint uncertainty that yield themselves to a small class of operational interpretations. Our notion relaxes this restriction, revealing previously unexplored joint uncertainty measures. To illustrate the utility of our formalism, we derive an uncertainty relation based on one such new measure. We also use our formalism to gain insight into the conditions under which measure-independent uncertainty relations can be found.
Uncertainty relations are commonly praised as one of the central pillars of quantum theory. Usually, they are taught in the first weeks of a beginners lecture, and introduced in the ?rst chapters of a textbook. However, their precise operational meaning and a formulation in a general context, i.e. beyond the example of position and momentum observables, are often left out. The reasoning for this is twofold: On one hand, an exact operational definition of uncertainty, indeterminacy and a corresponding uncertainty principle has been the content of many debates since the early days of quantum mechanics until today. From a modern perspective, we have the consent that there are at least the two notions of preparation and measurement uncertainty: the first notion prohibits the existence of dissipation free states and the latter one the existence of error free joint measurements. On the other hand, we have that, the mathematical tools, which are needed for comprehensive treatment of uncertainty relations in a general context, are still under development and usually go far beyond the mathematical level of an introductory course. In this thesis we will investigate these two notions of uncertainty, their corre- sponding uncertainty relations, such as their interplay. The aim of this thesis is to give answers to the central questions: (1.) Which quantities should be used to formulate uncertainty? (2.) How can we compute uncertainty relations for those? (3.) Are there connections between the two notions of uncertainty? We will do this, whenever possible, in a most general context and with a focus on relevant examples, otherwise. Therefore, we will consider constructions of mea- surement errors and deviation measures that quantify uncertainty, based on, so called, cost functions. Commonly used uncertainty measures like variances, en- tropies, and the Hamming distance are examples for these. We will investigate the structure of the corresponding uncertainty relations and provide several methods that enable us to compute them. The third question is addressed by a theorem that shows, for sharp observables, that measurement uncertainty relations can be lower bounded by preparation uncertainty relations, whenever the same cost function is used.
The so-called preparation uncertainty that occurs in the quantum world can be understood well in purely operational terms, and its existence in any given theory, perhaps differently than in quantum mechanics, can be verified by examining only measurement statistics. Namely, one says that uncertainty occurs in some theory when for some pair of observables, there is no preparation that would exhibit deterministic statistics for both of them. However, the right-hand side of the uncertainty relation is not operational anymore if we do not insist that it is just the minimum of the left-hand side for a given theory. For example, in quantum mechanics, it is some function of two observables that must be computed within the quantum formalism. Also, while joint nonmeasurability of observables is an operational notion, the complementarity in Bohr's sense (i.e., in terms of information needed to describe the system) has not yet been expressed in purely operational terms. Here we propose a general operational framework that provides answers to the above issues. We introduce an operational definition of complementarity and further postulate that complementary observables have to exhibit uncertainty, which means that we propose to put the (operational) complementarity as the right-hand side of the uncertainty relation. In particular, we identify two different notions of uncertainty and complementarity for which the above principle holds in the quantum-mechanical realm. We also introduce postulates for the general measures of uncertainty and complementarity. In order to define quantifiers of complementarity we first turn to the simpler notion of independence that is defined solely in terms of the statistics of two observables. Importantly, for clean and extremal observables---i.e., ones that cannot be simulated irreducibly by other observables---any measure of independence reduces to the proper complementary measure. Finally, as an application of our general framework we define a number of complementarity indicators and show that they can be used to state uncertainty relations. One of them, assuming some natural symmetries, leads to the Tsirelson bound for the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality. Lastly, we show that for a single system a variant of information causality called the information content principle, under the above symmetries, can be interpreted as an uncertainty relation in the above sense.
The notions of error and disturbance appearing in quantum uncertainty relations are often quantified by the discrepancy of a physical quantity from its ideal value. However, these real and ideal values are not the outcomes of simultaneous measurements, and comparing the values of unmeasured observables is not necessarily meaningful according to quantum theory. To overcome these conceptual difficulties, we take a different approach and define error and disturbance in an operational manner. In particular, we formulate both in terms of the probability that one can successfully distinguish the actual measurement device from the relevant hypothetical ideal by any experimental test whatsoever. This definition itself does not rely on the formalism of quantum theory, avoiding many of the conceptual difficulties of usual definitions. We then derive new Heisenberg-type uncertainty relations for both joint measurability and the error-disturbance tradeoff for arbitrary observables of finite-dimensional systems, as well as for the case of position and momentum. Our relations may be directly applied in information processing settings, for example to infer that devices which can faithfully transmit information regarding one observable do not leak any information about conjugate observables to the environment. We also show that Englert's wave-particle duality relation [PRL 77, 2154 (1996)] can be viewed as an error-disturbance uncertainty relation.
The notions of error and disturbance appearing in quantum uncertainty relations are often quantified by the discrepancy of a physical quantity from its ideal value. However, these real and ideal values are not the outcomes of simultaneous measurements, and comparing the values of unmeasured observables is not necessarily meaningful according to quantum theory. To overcome these conceptual difficulties, we take a different approach and define error and disturbance in an operational manner. In particular, we formulate both in terms of the probability that one can successfully distinguish the actual measurement device from the relevant hypothetical ideal by any experimental test whatsoever. This definition itself does not rely on the formalism of quantum theory, avoiding many of the conceptual difficulties of usual definitions. We then derive new Heisenberg-type uncertainty relations for both joint measurability and the error-disturbance tradeoff for arbitrary observables of finite-dimensional systems, as well as for the case of position and momentum. Our relations may be directly applied in information processing settings, for example to infer that devices which can faithfully transmit information regarding one observable do not leak any information about conjugate observables to the environment. We also show that Englert's wave-particle duality relation [PRL 77, 2154 (1996)] can be viewed as an error-disturbance uncertainty relation.
A concise review of various mathematical formulations of the uncertainty relations in quantum mechanics discovered since 1927 is given. Besides the traditional Heisenberg inequality, the modifications made by Schrödinger and Robertson, as well as generalizations to sets of several noncommuting operators, are considered. The "entropic" inequalities and "local" uncertainty relations, together with inequalities which connect the so-called total width and the mean peak width of a wave function, are discussed. Inequalities for the products of higher order moments of the coordinate and momentum are presented. Inequalities making the uncertainty relations more accurate when the "purity" of a quantum state is fixed are demonstrated. Diverse formulations of the energy-time uncertainty relations are considered.
Quantum theory predicts an inherent joint unpredictability for some pairs of measurements. For example, Heisenberg showed that the more precisely the position of a quantum particle is known, the less precisely its momentum can be known and vice versa. Uncertainty relations (URs) are mathematical expressions quantifying the constraints between the output probability distributions of the given sets of measurements. Typically, URs are expressed in terms of uncertainty quantifiers such as entropies. Based on an information-theoretic approach, we discovered a characterization that unifies all uncertainty quantifiers and thus, generalizes a large class of URs into a single framework. We also prove new URs that are fundamentally different from typical URs in that they are fine-grained; i.e. they set restrictions directly on the output probability distributions without using any particular uncertainty quantifiers. We used Majorization theory and other techniques such as matrix analysis to prove our fine-grained uncertainty relations.