Berkeley Fluids Seminar
University of California, Berkeley
Bring your lunch and enjoy learning about fluids!
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
240, Bechtel Hall, 13:00-14:00
Dr. Anand Oza (Courant Institute, NYU)
A trajectory equation for walking droplets: hydrodynamic pilot-wave theory
Abstract: Yves Couder and coworkers have demonstrated that millimetric droplets walking on a vibrating fluid bath exhibit several features previously thought to be peculiar to the microscopic quantum realm, including single-particle diffraction, tunneling, quantized orbits, and wave-like statistics in a corral. We here develop an integro-differential trajectory equation for these walking droplets with a view to gaining insight into their subtle dynamics. We then rationalize the emergence of orbital quantization in a rotating frame by assessing the stability of the orbital solutions. The stability analysis also predicts the existence of wobbling orbital states reported in recent experiments, and the absence of stable orbits in the limit of large vibrational forcing. In this limit, the complex walker dynamics gives rise to a coherent statistical behavior with wave-like features. We conclude by discussing recent efforts to model the interaction between pairs of walking droplets.
Acknowledgments
Prof. Graham Fleming (Vice Chancellor for Research, UC Berkeley)
Prof. Eliot Quataert on behalf of The Theoretical Astrophysics Center and the Astronomy Department (UC Berkeley)
Prof. Philip S. Marcus on behalf of the Mechanical Engineering Department (UC Berkeley)
Prof. Michael Manga (Earth and Planetary Science, UC Berkeley)
Prof. Evan Variano (Civil and Environmental Engineering, UC Berkeley)