Heisenberg, uncertainty, and the scanning tunneling microscope
Abstract
We show by a statistical analysis of high-resolution scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) experiments, that the interpretation of the density of electron charge as a statistical quantity leads to a conflict with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Given the precision in these experiments we find that the uncertainty principle would be violated by close to two orders of magnitude, if this interpretation were correct. We are thus forced to conclude that the density of electron charge is a physically real, i.e., in principle precisely measurable quantity.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1105.3914,
title = {Heisenberg, uncertainty, and the scanning tunneling microscope},
author = {Werner A Hofer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1105.3914},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
The paper has now been published in Frontiers of Physics. I have added a paragraph at the end citing other work on the foundations of quantum mechanics by Khrennikov, Groessing, Elze, and t'Hooft