English

Dirac Wave Functions of Positive Energy with Arbitrarily Small Position Uncertainty

Quantum Physics 2026-03-10 v2

Abstract

We consider wave functions in the Hilbert space H=L2(R3,C4)\mathcal{H}=L^2(\mathbb{R}^3,\mathbb{C}^4) of a single Dirac particle, specifically from the positive-energy subspace H+\mathcal{H}_+ of the free Dirac Hamiltonian. Over the decades, various authors conjectured that for wave functions from H+\mathcal{H}_+, there is a positive lower bound to the position uncertainty σx\sigma_x; in other words, that such states cannot be arbitrarily narrow in xx. Building on work by Bracken and Melloy, we show that this conjecture is false. (In fact, they already stated that this conjecture is false and already had a counter-example, but their proof that it is a counter-example had a gap.)

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.04569,
  title  = {Dirac Wave Functions of Positive Energy with Arbitrarily Small Position Uncertainty},
  author = {Ilmar Bürck and Roderich Tumulka},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.04569},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

18 pages LaTeX, 3 figure files; v2 minor addition