“The experiments involve an oil droplet that bounces along the surface of a liquid. The droplet gently sloshes the liquid with every bounce. At the same time, ripples from past bounces affect its course. The droplet’s interaction with its own ripples, which form what’s known as a pilot wave, causes it to exhibit behaviors previously thought to be peculiar to elementary particles — including behaviors seen as evidence that these particles are spread through space like waves, without any specific location, until they are measured.
Particles at the quantum scale seem to do things that human-scale objects do not do. They can tunnel through barriers, spontaneously arise or annihilate, and occupy discrete energy levels. This new body of research reveals that oil droplets, when guided by pilot waves, also exhibit these quantum-like features.”
Droplets can also seem to “tunnel” through barriers, orbit each other in stable “bound states,” and exhibit properties analogous to quantum spin and electromagnetic attraction. When confined to circular areas called corrals, they form concentric rings analogous to the standing waves generated by electrons in quantum corrals.
and
Like an electron occupying fixed energy levels around a nucleus, the bouncing droplet adopted a discrete set of stable orbits around the magnet, each characterized by a set energy level and angular momentum.
Yes and yes and yes (those are all examples mentioned in the article). If you have a specific example of a quantum phenomenon that pilot wave theory doesn’t exhibit, I’d like to know. Pilot wave advocates claim that pilot wave theory results in the same predictions, although I haven’t had time to chase down sources or work this out for myself.
My knowledge of it is pretty superficial, but I’m pretty confused about how it represents states with a superposition of particle numbers. For fixed number of (non relativistic) particles you can always just put the interesting mechanics (including spin, electromagnetic charge, etc!) in the wavefunction and then add an epiphenomenal ontologically-fundamental-particle like a cherry on top. We’ll, epiphenomenal in the Von Neumann measurement paradigm, presumably advocates think it plays some role in measurement, but I’m still a bit vague on that.
Anyhow, for mixtures of particle numbers, I genuinely don’t know how a Bohmian is supposed to get anything intuitive or pseudo-classical.
“The experiments involve an oil droplet that bounces along the surface of a liquid. The droplet gently sloshes the liquid with every bounce. At the same time, ripples from past bounces affect its course. The droplet’s interaction with its own ripples, which form what’s known as a pilot wave, causes it to exhibit behaviors previously thought to be peculiar to elementary particles — including behaviors seen as evidence that these particles are spread through space like waves, without any specific location, until they are measured.
Particles at the quantum scale seem to do things that human-scale objects do not do. They can tunnel through barriers, spontaneously arise or annihilate, and occupy discrete energy levels. This new body of research reveals that oil droplets, when guided by pilot waves, also exhibit these quantum-like features.”
So, does the bouncing oil droplet also tunnel through barriers, spontaneously arise or annihilate, and occupy discrete energy levels?
Because to me this seems like merely an analogy that works in some aspects, but fails in other aspects.
Per the article:
and
Yes and yes and yes (those are all examples mentioned in the article). If you have a specific example of a quantum phenomenon that pilot wave theory doesn’t exhibit, I’d like to know. Pilot wave advocates claim that pilot wave theory results in the same predictions, although I haven’t had time to chase down sources or work this out for myself.
My knowledge of it is pretty superficial, but I’m pretty confused about how it represents states with a superposition of particle numbers. For fixed number of (non relativistic) particles you can always just put the interesting mechanics (including spin, electromagnetic charge, etc!) in the wavefunction and then add an epiphenomenal ontologically-fundamental-particle like a cherry on top. We’ll, epiphenomenal in the Von Neumann measurement paradigm, presumably advocates think it plays some role in measurement, but I’m still a bit vague on that.
Anyhow, for mixtures of particle numbers, I genuinely don’t know how a Bohmian is supposed to get anything intuitive or pseudo-classical.
Note that the theory seems to have been around since the 1930′s, but these experiments are new (2016).