Interaction of walkers with a standing Faraday wave.

Abstract

Walkers (i.e., bouncing droplets coupled to a local Faraday wave) are sent on an orthogonal standing wave. The trajectories of successive walkers form a straight-propagating beam toward the wave that splits into three distinct paths during the interaction with the wave. At the end of the interaction, walkers' trajectories split again and are deviated into three main directions. The walkers' trajectories show sensitivity to parameters and initial conditions but remain predictable in some regions of the parameter space. The dependence of the statistical distribution of deviations on the wave amplitude markedly differs from the prediction of quantum mechanics for a particle interacting with a standing electromagnetic wave.