Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Uncertainty principle
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
===Coherent states=== {{Main article|Coherent state}} A coherent state is a right eigenstate of the [[annihilation operator]], <math display="block">\hat{a}|\alpha\rangle=\alpha|\alpha\rangle,</math> which may be represented in terms of [[Fock state]]s as <math display="block">|\alpha\rangle =e^{-{|\alpha|^2\over2}} \sum_{n=0}^\infty {\alpha^n \over \sqrt{n!}}|n\rangle</math> In the picture where the coherent state is a massive particle in a quantum harmonic oscillator, the position and momentum operators may be expressed in terms of the annihilation operators in the same formulas above and used to calculate the variances, <math display="block">\sigma_x^2 = \frac{\hbar}{2 m \omega},</math> <math display="block">\sigma_p^2 = \frac{\hbar m \omega}{2}.</math> Therefore, every coherent state saturates the Kennard bound <math display="block">\sigma_x \sigma_p = \sqrt{\frac{\hbar}{2 m \omega}} \, \sqrt{\frac{\hbar m \omega}{2}} = \frac{\hbar}{2}. </math> with position and momentum each contributing an amount <math display="inline">\sqrt{\hbar/2}</math> in a "balanced" way. Moreover, every [[squeezed coherent state]] also saturates the Kennard bound although the individual contributions of position and momentum need not be balanced in general.
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)