title: Quantumlike statistics of deterministic wave-particle interactions in a circular cavity.
abstract: A deterministic low-dimensional iterated map is proposed here to describe the interaction between a bouncing droplet and Faraday waves confined to a circular cavity. Its solutions are investigated theoretically and numerically. The horizontal trajectory of the droplet can be chaotic: it then corresponds to a random walk of average step size equal to half the Faraday wavelength. An analogy is made between the diffusion coefficient of this random walk and the action per unit mass ℏ/m of a quantum particle. The statistics of droplet position and speed are shaped by the cavity eigenmodes, in remarkable agreement with the solution of Schrödinger equation for a quantum particle in a similar potential well.
authors.affiliation: Microfluidics Lab, Department of Aerospace and Mechanics, University of Liège, B-4000 Liège, Belgium.
authors.forename: Tristan
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Gilet