Pilot-wave hydrodynamics
Name
Bush_Pilot-wave.pdf
Size
12.74 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
b896f7508c72a22f998dd74c8346b5cc
Author(s)
Bush, John W. M.
Date Issued
January 2015
Journal
Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics
Publisher
Annual Reviews
Citation
Bush, John W. M. "Pilot-Wave Hydrodynamics." Annual Review of Fluid Dynamics, Volume 47 (January 2015), p.269-292.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Yves Couder, Emmanuel Fort, and coworkers recently discovered that a millimetric droplet sustained on the surface of a vibrating fluid bath may self-propel through a resonant interaction with its own wave field. This article reviews experimental evidence indicating that the walking droplets exhibit certain features previously thought to be exclusive to the microscopic, quantum realm. It then reviews theoretical descriptions of this hydrodynamic pilot-wave system that yield insight into the origins of its quantumlike behavior. Quantization arises from the dynamic constraint imposed on the droplet by its pilot-wave field, and multimodal statistics appear to be a feature of chaotic pilot-wave dynamics. I attempt to assess the potential and limitations of this hydrodynamic system as a quantum analog. This fluid system is compared to quantum pilot-wave theories, shown to be markedly different from Bohmian mechanics and more closely related to de Broglie’s original conception of quantum dynamics, his double-solution theory, and its relatively recent extensions through researchers in stochastic electrodynamics.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mathematics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-fluid-010814-014506
