Position-Momenta Uncertainties in Classical Systems

Abstract

We design a thermal bath that preserves the conservation of a system's angular momentum or allows it to fluctuate around a specified nonzero mean while maintaining a Boltzmann distribution of energy in the steady state. We demonstrate that classical particles immersed in such baths exhibit position-momentum uncertainties with a strictly positive lower bound proportional to the absolute value of the mean angular momentum. The proportionality constant, $c$, is dimensionless and does not depend explicitly on the system's parameters. Remarkably, while $c$ is universally bounded by unity, it attains the exact value $c=1/2$ for particles in central potentials.

9 pages, 4 figures, Supplemental Material