Paper detail

Uncertainty relations for general phase spaces

We describe a setup for obtaining uncertainty relations for arbitrary pairs of observables related by Fourier transform. The physical examples discussed here are standard position and momentum, number and angle, finite qudit systems, and strings of qubits for quantum information applications. The uncertainty relations allow an arbitrary choice of metric for the distance of outcomes, and the choice of an exponent distinguishing e.g., absolute or root mean square deviations. The emphasis of the article is on developing a unified treatment, in which one observable takes values in an arbitrary locally compact abelian group and the other in the dual group. In all cases the phase space symmetry implies the equality of measurement uncertainty bounds and preparation uncertainty bounds, and there is a straightforward method for determining the optimal bounds.