Quantum Optics for Engineers

3

Uncertainty Principle

3.1    Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

Perhaps no other topic in physics is surrounded with more awe and mystique as Heisenberg’s succinct and beautiful uncertainty principle. Besides its beauty, the uncertainty principle is central to the most successful physical theory ever discovered by mankind: quantum mechanics. Richard Feynman, by far, physics’ most successful communicator, said: “The uncertainty principle protects quantum mechanics. Heisenberg recognized that if it were possible to measure the momentum and the position simultaneously with a greater accuracy, quantum mechanics would collapse. So he proposed that it must be impossible… Quantum mechanics maintains its perilous but still correct existence” (Feynman ...