Experimental verification of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for fullerene molecules

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle for material objects is an essential corner stone of quantum mechanics and clearly visualizes the wave nature of matter. Here, we report a demonstration of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for the fullerene molecule C₇₀ at a temperature of 900 K. We do this by showing the increase in molecular momentum spread after passage through a narrow slit with a variable width down to 70 nm. We find good quantitative agreement with the theoretical expectation.