On moments-based Heisenberg inequalities

Abstract

In this paper we revisit the quantitative formulation of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The primary version of this principle establishes the impossibility of refined simultaneous measurement of position x and momentum u for a (1-dimensional) quantum particle in terms of variances: x 2 u 2 ≥ 1/4. Since this inequality applies provided each variance exists, some authors proposed entropic versions of this principle as an alternative (employing Shannon's or Rényi's entropies). As another alternative, we consider moments-based formulations and show that inequalities involving moments of orders other than 2 can be found. Our procedure is based on the Rényi entropic versions of the Heisenberg relation together with the search for the maximal entropy under statistical moments' constraints ( x a and u b ). Our result improves a relation proposed very recently by Dehesa et al.[1] where the same approach was used but starting with the Shannon version of the entropic uncertainty relation. Furthermore, we show that when a = b, the best bound we can find with our approach coincides with that of Ref.[1] and, in addition, for a = b = 2 the variance-based Heisenberg relation is recovered. Finally, we illustrate our results in the cases of d-dimensional hydrogenic systems.