Time-of-arrival distribution for arbitrary potentials and Wigner's time-energy uncertainty relation

Baute, A. D; Mayato, R. Sala; Palao, J. P.; Muga, J. G.; Egusquiza, I. L.

Time-of-arrival distribution for arbitrary potentials and Wigner's time-energy uncertainty relation

Authors

Description

A realization of the concept of "crossing state" invoked, but not implemented, by Wigner, allows to advance in two important aspects of the time of arrival in quantum mechanics: (i) For free motion, we find that the limitations described by Aharonov et al. in Phys. Rev. A 57, 4130 (1998) for the time-of-arrival uncertainty at low energies for certain mesurement models are in fact already present in the intrinsic time-of-arrival distribution of Kijowski; (ii) We have also found a covariant generalization of this distribution for arbitrary potentials and positions.
4 pages, revtex, 2 eps figures included