High energy particles and uncertainty

[Lapidus]

Say we have a linear accelerator, that accelerates particles with 1 TeV along direction x. That means we know that the momentum of the particle in direction x is almost exactly 1 TeV.

But high-momentum particles have also a very short Broglie wavelength! The spread in x position is small for a particle moving fast in the x direction.

Of course, we can't have both, small spread in x and p_x.

So what is precise in high energy colliders, the momentum or the position of the accelerated particles?

thanks

 

[Simon Bridge]

A particle with a small deBroglie wavelength may still have a large uncertainty in measured position. I don't think particle accelerators often approach Heisenberg limits for uncertainty.