Talks

In the de Broglie-Bohm pilot-wave theory, an ensemble of fermions is not only described by a spinor,  but also by a distribution of position beables. If the distribution of positions is different from the one predicted by the Born rule, the ensemble is said to be in quantum non-equilibrium. Such ensembles, which can lead to an experimental discrimination between the pilot-wave theory and standard quantum mechanics, are thought to quickly relax to quantum equilibrium in most cases.   In this talk, I will look at the Majorana equation from the point of view of the pilot-wave theory and I will show that it predicts peculiar trajectories for the beables; they have to move luminally at all times and they usually undergo complex helical trajectories to give the illusion that their motion is subluminal. The nature of the Majorana trajectory suggests that relaxation to quantum equilibrium could only be partial and that quantum non-equilibrium could still survive at length scales below the Compton wavelength.  I investigate this claim, thanks to some numerical simulations of the temporal evolution of non-equilibrium distributions,  for three-dimensional confined systems governed by the Dirac and Majorana equations.