The uncertainty principle: Variations on a theme

We show how a number of well-known uncertainty principles for the Fourier transform, such as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the Donoho–Stark uncertainty principle, and Meshulam’s nonabelian uncertainty principle, have little to do with the structure of the Fourier transform itself. Rather, all of these results follow from very weak properties of the Fourier transform (shared by numerous linear operators), namely that it is bounded as an operator L1 → L∞, and that it is unitary. Using a single, simple proof template, and only these (or weaker) properties, we obtain some new proofs and many generalizations of these basic uncertainty principles, to new operators and to new settings, in a completely unified way. Together with our general overview, this paper can also serve as a survey of the many facets of the phenomena known as uncertainty principles.