Scientists sidestep Heisenberg uncertainty principle in precision sensing experiment
Physicists in Australia and Britain have reshaped quantum uncertainty to sidestep the restriction imposed by the famous Heisenberg uncertainty principle – a result that could underpin future ultra-precise sensor technology used in navigation, medicine and astronomy.
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle, introduced in 1927, says that you can’t know certain pairs of properties – such as a particle’s position and momentum – with unlimited precision at the same time. In other words, there is always a trade-off in uncertainty: the more closely one property is pinned down, the less certainty there is about the other.
The researchers also use the analogy of a clock to explain their findings (see image). Think of a normal clock with two hands: the hour hand and the minute hand. Now imagine the clock only has one hand. If it’s the hour hand, you can tell what hour it is and roughly what minute, but the minute reading will be very imprecise.
If the clock only has the minute hand, you can read the minutes very precisely, but you lose track of the larger context – specifically, which hour you’re in. This ‘modular’ measurement sacrifices some global information in exchange for much finer detail.
This project united experimentalists at the University of Sydney with theorists at RMIT, the University of Melbourne, Macquarie University and the University of Bristol in Britain. It shows how collaboration across institutions and borders can accelerate progress and strengthen Australia’s quantum research community.