We derive Heisenberg uncertainty principles for pairs of Linear Canonical Transforms of a given function, by resorting to the fact that these transforms are just metaplectic operators associated with free symplectic matrices. The results obtained synthesize and generalize previous results found in the literature, because they apply to all signals, in arbitrary dimension and any metaplectic operator (which includes Linear Canonical Transforms as particular cases). Moreover, we also obtain a generalization of the Robertson-Schrödinger uncertainty principle for Linear Canonical Transforms. We also propose a new quadratic phase-space distribution, which represents a signal along two intermediate directions in the time-frequency plane. The marginal distributions are always non-negative and permit a simple interpretation in terms of the Radon transform. We also give a geometric interpretation of this quadratic phase-space representation as a Wigner distribution obtained upon Weyl quantization on a non-standard symplectic vector space. Finally, we derive the multidimensional version of the Hardy uncertainty principle for metaplectic operators and the Paley-Wiener theorem for Linear Canonical Transforms.
We establish anisotropic uncertainty principles (UPs) for general metaplectic operators acting on
L2(Rd), including degenerate cases associated with symplectic matrices whose
B-block has nontrivial kernel. In this setting, uncertainty phenomena are shown to be intrinsically
directional and confined to an effective phase-space dimension given by
rank(B).
First, we prove sharp Heisenberg-Pauli-Weyl type inequalities involving only the directions
corresponding to
ker(B)⊥, with explicit lower bounds expressed in terms of geometric
quantities associated with the underlying symplectic transformation. We also provide a complete
characterization of all extremizers, which turn out to be partially Gaussian functions with free
behavior along the null directions of
B.
Building on this framework, we extend the Beurling-Hörmander theorem to the metaplectic
setting, obtaining a precise polynomial-Gaussian structure for functions satisfying suitable
exponential integrability conditions involving both
f and its metaplectic transform. Finally,
we prove a Morgan-type (or Gel'fand--Shilov type) uncertainty principle for metaplectic operators,
identifying a sharp threshold separating triviality from density of admissible functions and
showing that this threshold is invariant under metaplectic transformations.
Our results recover the classical Fourier case and free metaplectic transformations as special
instances, and reveal the geometric and anisotropic nature of uncertainty principles in the
presence of symplectic degeneracies.
The free metaplectic transformation is an N-dimensional linear canonical transformation. This transformation operator is useful, especially for signal processing applications. In this paper, in order to characterize simultaneously local analysis of a function (or signal) and its free metaplectic transformation, we extend some different uncertainty principles (UP) from quantum mechanics including Classical Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, Nazarov’s UP, Donoho and Stark’s UP, Hardy’s UP, Beurling’s UP, Logarithmic UP, and Entropic UP, which have already been well studied in the Fourier transform domain.
Inspired by a definition of the closed-form instantaneous cross-correlation Wigner distribution (Zhang, 2019), we generalize the notion of Wigner distribution to the so-called free metaplectic Wigner distribution (FMWD) through three free metaplectic transforms, in order to tackle a challenge in high-dimensional complex features information processing. We provide some representative special cases for this general form, including the
N-dimensional nonseparable affine characteristic Wigner distribution, kernel function Wigner distribution, convolution representation Wigner distribution and instantaneous cross-correlation Wigner distribution. We establish the standard Heisenberg’s uncertainty principles (HUPs) of the real-valued function for the FMWD. We also establish the standard HUPs of the complex-valued function for some specific (i.e., the orthogonal, the orthonormal, the minimum eigenvalue commutative and the maximum eigenvalue commutative) FMWDs. In view of the one-dimensional case of our results, we solve a burning question regarding the limit of time-frequency superresolution triggered by the linear canonical transform free parameters.
The metaplectic operator has shown to be a valid technique for generalizing the notion of cross Wigner distribution to achieve time-frequency superresolution. Inspired by the latest work (Cordero and Rodino, 2022), we revisit the notion of cross Wigner distribution in metaplectic transform domains by introducing two
2N×2Nsymplectic matrices rather than integrating them into one
4N×4Nsymplectic matrix. We style the derived general formulation as the cross metaplectic Wigner distribution and obtain its basic properties including time translation property, frequency modulation property, time translation and frequency modulation property, Moyal formula, complex conjugate symmetry, time reversal symmetry, and scaling property. We use it to define the so-called short-time metaplectic transform and clarify the equivalence between them. We establish the standard Heisenberg’s uncertainty principles for the cross metaplectic Wigner distribution, i.e., an attainable lower bound for two real-valued functions in cross metaplectic Wigner distribution domains and a sequence of attainable (unattainable) lower bounds for two complex-valued (one real-valued and the other complex-valued) functions in orthogonal, orthonormal, the minimum eigenvalue commutative and the maximum eigenvalue commutative cross metaplectic Wigner distribution domains. We further demonstrate the time-frequency superresolution superiority of the derived results over the conventional one through theoretical analyses and numerical experiments.
We develop a systematic analysis of the metaplectic semigroup
Mp+(d,C) associated with positive complex symplectic matrices, a notion introduced almost simultaneously and independently by Hörmander, Brunet, Kramer, and Howe, thereby extending the classical metaplectic theory beyond the unitary setting.
While the existing literature has largely focused on propagators of quadratic evolution equations, for which results are typically obtained via Mehler formulas, our approach is operator-theoretic and symplectic in spirit and adapts techniques from the standard metaplectic group
Mp(d,R) to a substantially broader framework that is not driven by differential problems or particular propagators.
This point of view provides deeper insight into the structure of the metaplectic semigroup, and allows us to investigate its generators, polar decomposition, and intertwining relations with complex conjugation and with the Wigner distribution. We then exploit these structural results to characterize, from a metaplectic perspective, classes of time-frequency representations satisfying prescribed structural properties. Finally, we discuss further implications for parabolic equations with complex quadratic Hamiltonians, we study the boundedness of their propagators on modulation spaces, we obtain estimates in time of their operator norms. Finally, we apply our theory to the study of propagation of Wigner singularities.
We extend Hardy's uncertainty principle for a square integrable function and its Fourier transform to the multidimensional case using a symplectic diagonalization. We use this extension to show that Hardy's uncertainty principle is equivalent to a statement on the Wigner distribution of the function. We give a geometric interpretation of our results in terms of the notion of symplectic capacity of an ellipsoid. Furthermore, we show that Hardy's uncertainty principle is valid for a general Lagrangian frame of the phase space. Finally, we discuss an extension of Hardy's theorem for the Wigner distribution for exponentials with convex exponents.