Violation of Heisenberg's error-disturbance uncertainty relation in neutron-spin measurements

Georg Sulyok, Stephan Sponar, Jacqueline Erhart, Gerald Badurek, Masanao Ozawa, and Yuji Hasegawa
Phys. Rev. A 88, 022110 – Published 14 August 2013

Abstract

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 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.

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  • Received 3 June 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.88.022110

©2013 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Georg Sulyok1, Stephan Sponar1, Jacqueline Erhart1, Gerald Badurek1, Masanao Ozawa2, and Yuji Hasegawa1

  • 1Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics, Vienna University of Technology, 1020 Vienna, Austria
  • 2Graduate School of Information Science, Nagoya University, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya, Japan

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Vol. 88, Iss. 2 — August 2013

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