Single-slit diffraction and the Heisenberg principle for position and momentum

2008/12/27 by W. Görlich, Ingo Hoffmann, I. Hoffmann +5
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #Orbital Angular Momentum in Optics #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #quant-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0812.4775

3 pages, 3 figures, references added, measurement setup impoved, content unchanged

openalex publication_date 2008/12/27 · arxiv created 2010/12/25 · arxiv updated 2010/12/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Monochromatic light is prepared by a single slit of spatial width Δx. The diffraction pattern is considered to obtain the corresponding probability density of the momentum. Let P be the probability weight to measure a momentum in a finite window of width Δp. For small Δp the asymptotic law P ~ ΔxΔp/h is verified, while h is Planck's constant of action.

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