Hydrodynamic Quantum Analogs

Professor John W.M. Bush, Professor of Applied Mathematics, MIT

The wave field generated by a droplet (black dot) executing an inertial orbit (dashed circle).

“Yves Couder and Emmanuel Fort have recently discovered that droplets walking on a vibrating fluid bath exhibit features previously thought to be peculiar to the quantum realm, including single-particle diffraction, tunneling, quantized orbits and orbital level splitting. Much of my group’s recent research has been directed towards elucidating the subtle pilot-wave dynamics of these walking droplets, and rationalizing their quantum-like behaviour.”