Hearing overcome uncertainty relation and measure duration of ultrashort pulses

Abstract

The human hearing sense is an astonishingly effective signal processor. Recent experiments [1, 2, 3] suggest that it is even capable of overcoming limitations implied by the time-frequency uncertainty relation. The latter, mostly known from quantum mechanics, requires that the product of uncertainties in time and frequency, Δt∙Δf , cannot be smaller than the limiting value Δt∙Δf = (1/4π), which holds when the signal is a harmonically oscillating function with a Gaussian envelope.