Single-particle diffraction and interference at a macroscopic scale.
A droplet bouncing on a vertically vibrated bath can become coupled to the surface wave it generates. It thus becomes a "walker" moving at constant velocity on the interface. Here the motion of these walkers is investigated when they pass through one or two slits limiting the transverse extent of their wave. In both cases a given single walker seems randomly scattered. However, diffraction or interference patterns are recovered in the histogram of the deviations of many successive walkers. The similarities and differences of these results with those obtained with single particles at the quantum scale are discussed.
Couder
Yves
Y
Matières et Systèmes Complexes and Laboratoire de Physique Statistique (ENS), Université Paris 7 Denis Diderot, CNRS-UMR 7057, 4 Place Jussieu, 75 251 Paris Cedex 05, France.
Fort
Emmanuel
E