Quantum Tunneling Explained: Pilot Waves and Persistent Structure

Quantum tunneling is often described as particles doing the impossible — slipping through barriers they do not have enough energy to cross. While that description is not wrong, it subtly frames tunneling as a kind of rule-breaking, as if nature is cheating its own laws.

In this video, I take a quieter approach.

Quantum tunneling is a standard and well-tested prediction of quantum mechanics. The perspective used here draws on David Bohm’s pilot-wave interpretation of the Schrödinger equation. Nothing in this discussion proposes new physics or modifies quantum theory. What I am exploring is whether a persistence-based framing helps us understand what the existing mathematics is already telling us.

We begin with the classical picture, where a particle encountering a barrier higher than its energy must reflect. Energy conservation allows no other outcome. This framework works extraordinarily well at macroscopic scales, but it breaks down when applied to quantum systems.

In quantum mechanics, particles are described by wavefunctions that extend through space. When such a wave encounters a barrier, it does not abruptly stop. It penetrates the barrier, decaying but not vanishing. Because measurement outcomes depend on the square of the wave’s amplitude, this leads to a finite probability of detecting the particle beyond the barrier. This is quantum tunneling — predicted precisely by the mathematics and confirmed experimentally.

Standard interpretations often stop there: the math works, probabilities are calculated, and questions about what the particle was “really doing” are set aside.

Bohm’s pilot-wave picture reads the same equations differently. The wavefunction remains real, but the particle also always has a definite position and trajectory. The particle is guided by the global structure of the wave — including regions it has not yet reached. When the wave deforms around a barrier, it reshapes the effective landscape the particle moves through. Some trajectories are reflected; others pass through. The outcomes appear probabilistic because the particle’s exact initial position within the wave is unknown, not because energy is borrowed or rules are violated.

From this perspective, tunneling is not about particles breaking classical laws. It is about persistent structure. The wave’s coherence, correlations, and boundary conditions span regions that classical reasoning would treat as inaccessible. That persistence constrains which futures remain available.

This framing also clarifies why tunneling disappears under decoherence. When environmental interactions disrupt the wave’s structure, the correlations that made tunneling possible are erased. The barrier becomes classically opaque again — not because conservation laws change, but because persistence is lost.

Seen this way, quantum tunneling fits into a broader pattern across physics. Energy conservation alone does not preserve memory or structure. What persists are constraints, correlations, and large-scale patterns that resist being scrambled. Tunneling may be one of the smallest-scale examples of this general principle: global structure quietly shaping local outcomes.

This video does not argue that Bohm’s interpretation is experimentally superior. It makes the same predictions as standard quantum mechanics. The question left open is interpretive: does thinking in terms of persistence and structure help us see connections we might otherwise miss?

My name is Charles Carroll. Thank you for listening and thinking this through with me. If you have questions, alternative perspectives, or disagreements, I genuinely welcome the discussion in the comments.
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This channel explores how structure, information, and persistence shape the universe — from cosmology and physics to complexity, emergence, and scientific testing.
The content is part of the Carroll Wells Gradient (CWG) project, a layered framework for understanding how patterns survive, evolve, and get filtered by reality.

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