Uncertainty-principle noise in vacuum-tunneling transducers
Abstract
The fundamental sources of noise in a vacuum-tunneling probe used as an electromechanical transducer to monitor the location of a test mass are examined using a first-quantization formalism. We show that a tunneling transducer enforces the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for the position and momentum of a test mass monitored by the transducer through the presence of two sources of noise: the shot noise of the tunneling current and the momentum fluctuations transferred by the tunneling electrons to the test mass. We analyze a number of cases including symmetric and asymmetric rectangular potential barriers and a barrier in which there is a constant electric field. Practical configurations for reaching the quantum limit in measurements of the position of macroscopic bodies with such a class of transducers are studied.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1003.5046,
title = {Uncertainty-principle noise in vacuum-tunneling transducers},
author = {Carlo Presilla and Roberto Onofrio and Mark F. Bocko},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1003.5046},
year = {2015}
}