A platform for investigating Bell correlations in pilot-wave hydrodynamics

Abstract

Since its discovery in 2005, the hydrodynamic pilot-wave system has provided a concrete macroscopic realization of wave-particle duality and concomitant classical analogs of a growing list of quantum effects. The question naturally arises as to whether this system might support statistical states that violate Bell's inequality, and so yield a classical analog of quantum entanglement. We here introduce a new platform for addressing this question, a numerical model of coupled bipartite tunneling in the hydrodynamic pilot-wave system. We demonstrate that, under certain conditions, the Bell inequality is violated in a static Bell test owing to correlations induced by the wave-mediated coupling between the two subsystems. The establishment of non-factorizable states with two spatially separated classical particles introduces the possibility of novel forms of quantum-inspired classical computing.