  We explore the connections between the constraints on the precision of
quantum logical operations that arise from a conservation law, and those
arising from quantum field fluctuations. We show that the conservation-law
based constraints apply in a number of situations of experimental interest,
such as Raman excitations, and atoms in free space interacting with the
multimode vacuum. We also show that for these systems, and for states with a
sufficiently large photon number, the conservation-law based constraint
represents an ultimate limit closely related to the fluctuations in the quantum
field phase.
