An Affordable Pedagogical Setup for Wave-particule Duality and Applications to Chaotic Stadium Cavity

Abstract

Walking droplets represent an ideal playground to explore wave-particle duality at the macroscopic scale. The proper control and measurement of such system requires several experimental tools that are not often easily affordable at undergraduate level. This paper proposes a complete low-cost and open-source experimental setup for walking droplets with a performance characterization. The setup is tested by examining the behaviour of droplets in the stadium billiard, a two-dimensional concave cavity that yields chaotic trajectories. Drastic differences between classical and quantum particles behaviour were observed in such geometry. In particular, the long-term evolution of walking droplets in a stadium billiard presents clear scarring patterns, informing on the existence of preferred "probable positions" within the billiard.