English

Uncertainty in the context of multislit interferometry

Quantum Physics 2014-08-29 v2

Abstract

A pair of uncertainty relations relevant for quantum states of multislit interferometry is derived, based on the mutually commuting "modular" position and momentum operators and their complementary counterparts, originally introduced by Aharonov and co-workers. We provide a precise argument as to why these relations are superior to the standard Heisenberg uncertainty relation at expressing the complementarity between spatial localisation and the appearance of fringes. We further support the argument with explicit computations involving wavefunctions specifically tailored to the interference setup. Conceptually developing the idea of Aharonov and co-workers, we show how the modular momentum should reflect the given experimental setup, yielding a refined observable that accurately captures the fine structure of the interference pattern.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1405.7873,
  title  = {Uncertainty in the context of multislit interferometry},
  author = {Johannes Biniok and Paul Busch and Jukka Kiukas},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1405.7873},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

Version 2 contains minor corrections and improvements as well as added mathematical detail in the appendix

R2 v1 2026-06-22T04:27:01.901Z