What can bouncing oil droplets tell us about quantum mechanics?

Presented by Peter Evans, The University of Queensland

A recent series of experiments from a team in Paris have demonstrated that an oil droplet bouncing on a vibrating fluid surface displays behaviour that is typically considered to be quantum behaviour. The suggestion has been made that this fluid mechanical system provides a classical model of the pilot wave mechanism of the de Broglie-Bohm theory of quantum mechanics: the wave on the fluid surface acts as a pilot wave that guides the behaviour of the oil droplet in analogy to the way in which the de Broglie-Bohm pilot wave guides the behaviour of the quantum particle configuration. In this talk I assess the possibility, using recent work on the philosophy of analogue simulation, that these experiments are telling us something substantial about quantum mechanics.