Position-momentum entropic uncertainty relation and complementarity in single-slit and double-slit experiments

Abstract

The exact analytical values of the position and momentum information entropies are calculated for the single-slit and double-slit diffraction experiments. In both cases, the product of the exponentials of the entropies is strictly greater than the lower bound πeħ given by the optimal entropic uncertainty relation for position and momentum, which implies that the single-slit and double-slit configurations are not minimum-uncertainty states. The results obtained show that the position-momentum entropic uncertainty relation provides a rigorous quantitative expression for the uncertainty principle in these experiments, unlike the Heisenberg inequality for standard deviations. However, it is also shown that, in the double-slit experiment, wave-particle duality cannot be derived from the entropic uncertainty relation.