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Bohmian mechanics remains unchallenged by tunnelling experiment

arising from: V. Sharoglazova et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09099-4 (2025).

In a recent work1, Sharoglazova et al. reported an experiment aimed at determining how fast quantum particles traverse a classically forbidden region, where motion is prohibited in classical physics but allowed by quantum tunnelling. They argue that the inferred energy–speed relation challenges Bohmian mechanics, which augments quantum theory with a law for particle velocities and trajectories. We show that this claim relies on idealizations that are inappropriate for the experiment’s dynamical regime and that, if taken seriously, would pose comparable problems for standard quantum mechanics. Once the time-dependent and dissipative features of the experiment are taken into account, the results are fully consistent with Bohmian mechanics.

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Fig. 1: Numerical simulations of the Bohmian trajectories.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.

Data availability

No datasets were generated beyond the numerical values underlying the plot, which are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Code availability

The numerical code used to generate the plot in this work is available from the corresponding author upon request.

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