Measuring Energy, Estimating Hamiltonians, and the Time-Energy Uncertainty Relation

Abstract

Suppose that the Hamiltonian acting on a quantum system is unknown and one wants to determine what is the Hamiltonian. We show that in general this requires a time $Δt$ which obeys the uncertainty relation $Δt ΔH \gtrsim 1$ where $ΔH$ is a measure of how accurately the unknown Hamiltonian must be estimated. We then apply this result to the problem of measuring the energy of an unknown quantum state. It has been previously shown that if the Hamiltonian is known, then the energy can in principle be measured in an arbitrarily short time. On the other hand we show that if the Hamiltonian is not known then an energy measurement necessarily takes a minimum time $Δt$ which obeys the uncertainty relation $Δt ΔE \gtrsim 1$ where $ΔE$ is the precision of the energy measurement. Several examples are studied to address the question of whether it is possible to saturate these uncertainty relations. Their interpretation is discussed in detail.