In physics, complementarity is a conceptual aspect of quantum mechanics that Niels Bohr regarded as an essential feature of the theory. The complementarity principle holds that objects have certain pairs of complementary properties which cannot all be observed or measured simultaneously, for examples, position and momentum or wave and particle properties. In modern terms, complementarity encompasses both the uncertainty principle and wave-particle duality.
Bohr considered one of the foundational truths of quantum mechanics to be the fact that setting up an experiment to measure one quantity of a pair, for instance the position of an electron, excludes the possibility of measuring the other, yet understanding both experiments is necessary to characterize the object under study. In Bohr's view, the behavior of atomic and subatomic objects cannot be separated from the measuring instruments that create the context in which the measured objects behave. Consequently, there is no "single picture" that unifies the results obtained in these different experimental contexts, and only the "totality of the phenomena" together can provide a completely informative description.
History
Background
Complementarity as a physical model derives from Niels Bohr's 1927 presentation in Como, Italy, at a scientific celebration of the work of Alessandro Volta 100 years previous. Bohr's subject was complementarity, the idea that measurements of quantum events provide complementary information through seemingly contradictory results. While Bohr's presentation was not well received, it did crystallize the issues ultimately leading to the modern wave-particle duality concept. The contradictory results that triggered Bohr's ideas had been building up over the previous 20 years.
The contradictory evidence came both from light and from electrons. The wave theory of light, broadly successful for over a hundred years, had been challenged by Planck's 1901 model of blackbody radiation and Einstein's 1905 interpretation of the photoelectric effect. These theoretical models use discrete energy, a quantum, to describe the interaction of light with matter. Despite confirmation by various experimental observations, the photon theory (as it came to be called later) remained controversial until Arthur Compton performed a series of experiments from 1922 to 1924 demonstrating the momentum of light. The experimental evidence of particle-like momentum seemingly contradicted other experiments demonstrating the wave-like interference of light.
The contradictory evidence from electrons arrived in the opposite order. Many experiments by J. J. Thompson, Robert Millikan, and Charles Wilson among others had shown that free electrons had particle properties. However in 1924, Louis de Broglie proposed that electrons had an associated wave and Schrödinger demonstrated that wave equations accurately account for electron properties in atoms. Again some experiments showed particle properties and others wave properties.
Bohr's resolution of these contradictions is to accept them. In his Como lecture he says: "our interpretation of the experimental material rests essentially upon the classical concepts." Direct observation being impossible, observations of quantum effects are necessarily classical. Whatever the nature of quantum events, our only information will arrive via classical results. If experiments sometimes produce wave results and sometimes particle results, that is the nature of light and of the ultimate constituents of matter.
Bohr's lectures
Niels Bohr apparently conceived of the principle of complementarity during a skiing vacation in Norway in February and March 1927, during which he received a letter from Werner Heisenberg regarding an as-yet-unpublished result, a thought experiment about a microscope using gamma rays. This thought experiment implied a tradeoff between uncertainties that would later be formalized as the uncertainty principle. To Bohr, Heisenberg's paper did not make clear the distinction between a position measurement merely disturbing the momentum value that a particle carried and the more radical idea that momentum was meaningless or undefinable in a context where position was measured instead. Upon returning from his vacation, by which time Heisenberg had already submitted his paper for publication, Bohr convinced Heisenberg that the uncertainty tradeoff was a manifestation of the deeper concept of complementarity. Heisenberg duly appended a note to this effect to his paper, before its publication, stating: