Heisenberg-Type Uncertainty Relation for Qubits

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Consider a pair of sharp qubit observables . These observables do not commute and cannot be measured jointly and precisely; they are incompatible. However, allowing for imprecision in the measurement makes it possible to measure approximations
to the noncommuting pair
. The approximators
would ideally be chosen so that they give the best possible approximation to
without being incompatible themselves. In this Demonstration, you can explore this choice of
: representing
by vectors
on a vertical slice of the Bloch sphere, the described physical structure translates into geometric constraints. The vectors
and
(both represented by black arrows) are to be approximated by the vectors
(blue arrow) and
(red arrow), while
must be contained in the blue ellipse and
must be contained in the red ellipse. You can drag the vectors
. The scale on the right-hand side indicates how well the current choice of
is approximating
. No choice of approximators
can do better than the minimum of this scale.
Contributed by: Johannes Biniok and Paul Busch (August 2014)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
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