Walking droplets, pilot waves, and word choices
DOI: 10.1063/PT.3.3120
After reading John Bush’s article “The new wave of pilot-wave theory” (Physics Today, August 2015, page 47 ), I want to remind readers of the limitations of the analogy. The oil-drop experiments provide a tangible partial analogue of the pilot-wave picture, but one that is restricted to single-particle phenomena. Such experiments cannot reproduce the types of phenomena that depend on entanglement; only in the case of a single particle does the wavefunction have the same mathematical form—a scalar function over space—as the waves in the oil.
Once two particles are involved, the fact that the wavefunction is defined over the configuration space of the system rather than over physical space becomes crucial, and the partial analogy to the oil drops fails. In other words, the analogy does not extend to what most people consider the most interesting aspects of quantum mechanics.
More about the Authors
Jeffery Winkler. (jefferywinkler@mail.com) Hanford, California.
