Ultimate limit on time signal generation

2020/04/16 by Yuxiang Yang, Renato Renner, Yang, Yuxiang +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Frequency and Time Standards #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2004.07857

openalex publication_date 2020/04/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

The generation of time signals is a fundamental task in science. Here we study the relation between the quality of a time signal and the physics of the system that generates it. According to quantum theory, any time signal can be decomposed into individual quanta that lead to single detection events. Our main result is a bound on how sharply peaked in time these events can be, which depends on the dimension of the signal generator. This result promises applications in various directions, including information theory, quantum clocks, and process simulation.

Citations

• Computational Mechanics: Pattern and Prediction, Structure and Simplicity
• Accuracy enhancing protocols for quantum clocks

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