Entropic Energy-Time Uncertainty Relation
Name
PhysRevLett.122.100401.pdf
Size
261.21 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
9316ed1be78ac1c836b8826bff87615c
Author(s)
Lloyd, Seth
Date Issued
March 2019
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Coles, Patrick J. et al. “Entropic Energy-Time Uncertainty Relation.” Physical Review Letters 122 (2019): 100401 © 2019 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Energy-time uncertainty plays an important role in quantum foundations and technologies, and it was even discussed by the founders of quantum mechanics. However, standard approaches (e.g., Robertson’s uncertainty relation) do not apply to energy-time uncertainty because, in general, there is no Hermitian operator associated with time. Following previous approaches, we quantify time uncertainty by how well one can read off the time from a quantum clock. We then use entropy to quantify the information-theoretic distinguishability of the various time states of the clock. Our main result is an entropic energy-time uncertainty relation for general time-independent Hamiltonians, stated for both the discrete-time and continuous-time cases. Our uncertainty relation is strong, in the sense that it allows for a quantum memory to help reduce the uncertainty, and this formulation leads us to reinterpret it as a bound on the relative entropy of asymmetry. Because of the operational relevance of entropy, we anticipate that our uncertainty relation will have information-processing applications.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.100401
