Position-Momenta Uncertainties in Classical Systems
Statistical Mechanics
2025-11-26 v2 Quantum Physics
Abstract
We design a thermal bath that preserves the conservation of a system's angular momentum or allows it to fluctuate around a specified nonzero mean while maintaining a Boltzmann distribution of energy in the steady state. We demonstrate that classical particles immersed in such baths exhibit position-momentum uncertainties with a strictly positive lower bound proportional to the absolute value of the mean angular momentum. The proportionality constant, , is dimensionless and does not depend explicitly on the system's parameters. Remarkably, while is universally bounded by unity, it attains the exact value for particles in central potentials.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2503.24122,
title = {Position-Momenta Uncertainties in Classical Systems},
author = {Dipesh K. Singh and P. K. Mohanty},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.24122},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
9 pages, 4 figures, Supplemental Material