Trajectories in coupled waveguides: an application to a recent experiment and Hiley’s lessons on the falsification of the Bohmian model

Abstract From “surreal” trajectories to which-way measurements, Basil Hiley had a lesson: claims of falsifying the Bohmian model do not withstand scrutiny provided the model is applied correctly. In this work we compute de Broglie-Bohm trajectories for particles tunneling in coupled waveguides relevant to a recent experiment having claimed to challenge the Bohmian model. We show that the Bohmian model – correctly applied – gives results identical to the standard quantum approach, first by working out a simple one-dimensional model, and then by computing Bohmian trajectories for the full two-dimensional problem representing a quantum particle propagating inside coupled waveguides. We further recall the contextual nature of the Bohmian trajectories whereby the trajectories of a closed system differ from the ones observed when an interaction with a measurement apparatus takes places.