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Bouncing Oil Droplets, de Broglie’s Quantum Thermostat, and Convergence to Equilibrium

Bouncing Oil Droplets, de Broglie’s Quantum Thermostat, and Convergence to Equilibrium

Authors :
Mohamed Hatifi
Ralph Willox
Samuel Colin
Thomas Durt
Source :
Entropy, Vol 20, Iss 10, p 780 (2018)
Publication Year :
2018
Publisher :
MDPI AG, 2018.

Abstract

Recently, the properties of bouncing oil droplets, also known as “walkers,” have attracted much attention because they are thought to offer a gateway to a better understanding of quantum behavior. They indeed constitute a macroscopic realization of wave-particle duality, in the sense that their trajectories are guided by a self-generated surrounding wave. The aim of this paper is to try to describe walker phenomenology in terms of de Broglie–Bohm dynamics and of a stochastic version thereof. In particular, we first study how a stochastic modification of the de Broglie pilot-wave theory, à la Nelson, affects the process of relaxation to quantum equilibrium, and we prove an H-theorem for the relaxation to quantum equilibrium under Nelson-type dynamics. We then compare the onset of equilibrium in the stochastic and the de Broglie–Bohm approaches and we propose some simple experiments by which one can test the applicability of our theory to the context of bouncing oil droplets. Finally, we compare our theory to actual observations of walker behavior in a 2D harmonic potential well.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
10994300
Volume :
20
Issue :
10
Database :
Directory of Open Access Journals
Journal :
Entropy
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
edsdoj.9bf19ed9b3ef492ab5fb0405f4b53a4a
Document Type :
article
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.3390/e20100780