27 Dec
2002
27 Dec
'02
4:23 p.m.
I've always seen this inequality referred to as the "Uncertainty Principle", even in digital signal processing, where it is the embodiment of the principle "a signal cannot be time-limited and frequency-limited simultaneously". In quantum mechanics, one deals with "conjugate pairs" of variables, such as position-momentum, which in QM are Fourier transforms of each other. In this setting, the inequality below (usually with 1/16 on the RHS), is indeed the mathematical embodiment of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. DHB int(x^2 f(x)^2) * int(p^2 F(p)^2) >= 1 is called a statement of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (HUP). Does this theorem (with suitable hypotheses appended) have a name? It is not the HUP.