Scientists have theoretically substantiated the possibility of attracting objects through their interaction with quantum mechanical waves of probability. The analysis showed that despite the fact that de Broglie waves have a probabilistic nature and are not waves of any physical magnitude in the classical sense, their interaction with objects strongly resembles the case of ordinary waves. The new work has been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Several years ago, an unexpected discovery was made that a constant light beam or sound wave striking a small object can attract it to its source. In a new study, Andrei Novitsky of the Technical University of Denmark and his colleagues found the conditions under which the probability density wave of a beam of particles, such as electrons, will create an attractive force.
An attractive beam works when waves, when interacting with an object, receive an impulse in the direction in which they propagate. This acceleration of the beam causes the object to receive a recoil momentum in the opposite direction. This pulse pushes the object back towards the source of the incident beam. Often, the beam is created in such a way that its amplitude is described by the Bessel function of the first kind (in which case it is called the "Bessel ray"), then it propagates in the form of a cone. Novitsky and his colleagues analyzed the influence of parameters such as the angle at the apex of the cone, the energy of the beam, and the features of the electromagnetic interaction between the object and the beam.
The team found that there is a wide range of parameters for which the de Broglie wave forms an attractive beam, but the interaction between the beam and the object matters. Thus, the Coulomb field cannot lead to an attractive force, while the Yukawa field, which describes nuclear interactions, can.
