On the Heisenberg principle, namely on the information-disturbance trade-off in a quantum measurement

Abstract

Common misconceptions on the Heisenberg principle are reviewed, and the original spirit of the principle is reestablished in terms of the trade-off between information retrieved by a measurement and disturbance on the measured system. After analyzing the possibility of probabilistically reversible measurements, along with erasure of information and undoing of disturbance, general information-disturbance trade-offs are presented, where the disturbance of the measurement is related to the possibility in principle of undoing its effect.

13 LeTeX pages, 2 figures, fortschritte.sty. To appear on Fortschritte der Physik. Presented at Quantum Interferometry IV, Trieste, March 2002