Authors Referees APS Members |
Unpredictable tunneling of a classical wave-particle associationAccepted Wednesday May 06, 2009 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 tunnelling: 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 non-locality sufficient to generate a quantum-like tunnelling at a macroscopic scale. |
