The purpose of this paper is to discuss two forms in which the time–energy uncertainty relation can appear. One of them concerns the time of preparation of a given state and the other the lifetime of compound systems. Both will be illustrated here through exactly solvable examples. The first one will be the opening and subsequent closing of a shutter on which we have an incident beam of particles. This problem shows a diffraction-in-time effect closely connected with the first type of time–energy uncertainty relation. The second will be the decay of a compound state described through a schematic R matrix formalism. There one can clearly see the transition between the time–energy uncertainty relation as associated with the interval in which the decay process has been in operation, and as associated with the lifetime of the compound state.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss two forms in which the time–energy uncertainty relation can appear. One of them concerns the time of preparation of a given state and the other the lifetime of compound systems. Both will be illustrated here through exactly solvable examples. The first one will be the opening and subsequent closing of a shutter on which we have an incident beam of particles. This problem shows a diffraction-in-time effect closely connected with the first type of time–energy uncertainty relation. The second will be the decay of a compound state described through a schematic R matrix formalism. There one can clearly see the transition between the time–energy uncertainty relation as associated with the interval in which the decay process has been in operation, and as associated with the lifetime of the compound state.
In a previous note a dynamical description of resonance scattering was given, and transient terms appeared in the wave function describing the process. To understand the physical significance of these terms, the transient effects that appear when a shutter is opened are discussed in this paper. For a nonrelativistic beam of particles, the transient current has a close mathematical resemblance with the intensity of light in the Fresnel diffraction by a straight edge. This is the reason for calling the transient phenomena by the name of diffraction in time.The shutter problem is discussed for particles whose wave functions satisfy the Schr\"odinger equation, the ordinary wave equation, and the Klein-Gordon equation. Only for the Schr\"odinger time-dependent equation do the transient wave functions resemble the solutions that appear in Sommerfeld's theory of diffraction. The connection of transient phenomena with the time-energy uncertainty relation, and the interpretation of the transient current in a scattering process, are briefly discussed. The relativistic wave functions for the shutter problem may play an important role in the dynamical description of a relativistic scattering process.
The more usual problems discussed in classical mechanics in elementary textbooks are the non-dissipative ones in which there is a Hamiltonian representing the energy as a constant of motion. The translation of this type of problem to quantum mechanics is very well known. Conversely, there are very simple classical mechanical problems that involve dissipation, but whose translation to quantum mechanics on the basis of a corresponding Hamiltonian is sometimes misinterpreted, since the underlying classical formalism involves non-canonical transformations that lead to non-unitary transformations of the quantum mechanical wavefunctions. In this paper we shall discuss the problem of a beam of particles of given momentum incident from the left on a shutter that is opened at time t = 0. The solution has the well known properties of diffraction in time, but we will analyse it quantum mechanically both when dissipation is and is not present. The objective is to get a better understanding of the effect of dissipation in the quantum mechanical picture and to estimate the influence of the above mentioned non-unitary transformations on this particular problem.
Because time does not appear in Schr\"odinger's equation as an operator but only as a parameter, the time-energy uncertainty relation must be formulated in a special way. This problem has in fact been studied by many authors and we give a summary of their treatments. We then criticize the main conclusion of these treatments; viz., that in a measurement of energy carried out in a time interval, $\ensuremath{\Delta}t$, there must be a minimum uncertainty in the transfer of energy to the observed system, given by $\ensuremath{\Delta}({E}^{\ensuremath{'}}\ensuremath{-}E)>~\frac{h}{\ensuremath{\Delta}t}$. We show that this conclusion is erroneous in two respects. First, it is not consistent with the general principles of the quantum theory, which require that all uncertainty relations be expressible in terms of the mathematical formalism, i.e., by means of operators, wave functions, etc. Secondly, the examples of measurement processes that were used to derive the above uncertainty relation are not general enough. We then develop a systematic presentation of our own point of view, with regard to the role of time in the quantum theory, and give a concrete example of a measurement process not satisfying the above uncertainty relation.
On the basis of the principles proposed by the first author in 1970 and 1979 the time-energy uncertainty relationship in quantum mechanics is constructed explicitly for transitions between adequately prescribed states of a simple system of a nonrelativistic particle moving in a constant uniform field of force. The implications of the uncertainties in time and energy contemplated for transitions are clarified by contrasting them with ordinary uncertainties of various dynamical variables evaluated in one single state of the system. Decay process and the mean lifetime related to it are discussed too in a particular case when a pair of states, initial and final, for a transition happen to be identical.
Although time measurements are routinely performed in laboratories, their theoretical description is still an open problem. Correspondingly, the status of the energy-time uncertainty relation is unsettled. In the first part of this work the necessity of positive operator valued measures (POVM) as descriptions of every quantum experiment is reviewed, as well as the suggestive role played by the probability current in time measurements. Furthermore, it is shown that no POVM exists, which approximately agrees with the probability current on a very natural set of wave functions; nevertheless, the choice of the set is crucial, and on more restrictive sets the probability current does provide a good arrival time prediction. Some ideas to experimentally detect quantum effects in time measurements are discussed. In the second part of the work the energy-time uncertainty relation is considered, in particular for a model of alpha decay for which the variance of the energy can be calculated explicitly, and the variance of time can be estimated. This estimate is tight for systems with long lifetimes, in which case the uncertainty relation is shown to be satisfied. Also the linewidth-lifetime relation is shown to hold, but contrary to the common expectation, it is found that the two relations behave independently, and therefore it is not possible to interpret one as a consequence of the other. To perform the mentioned analysis quantitative scattering estimates are necessary. To this end, bounds of the form ∥1Re−iHtψ∥22≤Ct−3 have been derived, where ψ denotes the initial state, H the Hamiltonian, R a positive constant, and C is explicitly known. As intermediate step, bounds on the derivatives of the S-matrix in the form $\|1_K S^{(n)}\|_\infty \leq C_{n,K} $ have been established, with n=1,2,3, and the constants Cn,K explicitly known.
The subject of transient effects in quantum mechanics has been of interest to one of the authors (MM) since long before it became possible to study them experimentally. In particular, the problem of opening a shutter instantaneously led him to the concept of diffraction in time [1]. Physically, it is only possible to open a shutter as a function of time and this complicates the problem greatly, as it is then not invariant under time translations and thus, among other difficulties, the energy of the system is not a constant of the motion. Kleber and Scheitler [2] analyzed the problem describing the shutter as a ±¡function potential at the origin x = 0, but whose strength was an inverse function of time. In this paper, we follow another procedure by adding to our initial two particle channel another one, and make them interact through appropriate time independent boundary conditions at the point of coincidence. The full problem conserves the total energy, but this does not happen if we restrict ourselves to a description in the first channel only. Thus, we have a rough but analytically solvable problem using a Laplace transform, which mimics some aspects of a time-dependent shutter, and compare our results with some of those derived by the different procedure of reference [2].