Unpredictable Tunneling of a Classical Wave-Particle Association
- 16 June 2009
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review Letters
- Vol. 102 (24), 240401
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.102.240401
Abstract
A droplet bouncing on a vibrated bath becomes a “walker” moving at constant velocity on the interface when it couples to the surface wave it generates. Here the motion of a walker is investigated when it collides with barriers of various thicknesses. Surprisingly, it undergoes a form of tunneling: the reflection or transmission of a given incident walker is unpredictable. However, the crossing probability decreases exponentially with increasing barrier width. This shows that this wave-particle association has a nonlocality sufficient to generate a quantumlike tunneling at a macroscopic scale.Keywords
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