We consider the motion of a droplet bouncing on a vibrating bath of the same fluid in the presence of a central potential. We formulate a rotation symmetry-reduced description of this system, which allows for the straightforward application of dynamical systems theory tools. As an illustration of the utility of the symmetry reduction, we apply it to a model of the pilot-wave system with a central harmonic force. We begin our analysis by identifying local bifurcations and the onset of chaos. We then describe the emergence of chaotic regions and their merging bifurcations, which lead to the formation of a global attractor. In this final regime, the droplet's angular momentum spontaneously changes its sign as observed in the experiments of Perrard et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett., 113(10):104101, 2014).
Keywords: hydrodynamic quantum analogs, symmetry reductionDuring the quantum physics' infancy, Louis de Broglie 1 imagined it as the outcome of the dynamics of a point-like particle that is interacting with a continuous background field. This viewpoint was to a large extent forgotten during the second half of the twentieth century due to the great success of the Copenhagen interpretation. In recent years, a resurgent interest in de Broigle's "wave-particle duality" has developed as a result of its discovery in a completely different field: fluid mechanics. In a series of experiments pioneered by Couder et al. 2,3 , several phenomena that were once thought to be exclusive to quantum physics were demonstrated in the macroscopic setting of a droplet of silicon oil bouncing on vertically vibrating bath of the same fluid. We examine a class of these systems with rotational symmetry and formulate a novel method for their analysis. We demonstrate the utility of our approach in a numerical study where we describe the chaotic dynamics of a hydrodynamic pilotwave model through a geometrical approach, in which we identify solutions with qualitative differences and intermittent transitions in between.