Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 240401 (2009) [4 pages]Unpredictable Tunneling of a Classical Wave-Particle AssociationReceived 10 March 2009; published 16 June 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 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. © 2009 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.240401
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.240401
PACS:
03.65.Xp, 05.45.−a, 05.65.+b, 47.55.D−
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