A swirling vortex in a glass of water behaves exactly like a quantum system, governed by the invisible math of subatomic particles.
April 24, 2026
Original Paper
Why Does Classical Turbulence Obey an Area Law?
arXiv · 2604.19173
The Takeaway
Turbulence in everyday liquids like water or air has long been considered one of the hardest problems in classical physics. This discovery shows that the chaotic patterns in these fluids actually follow the same laws as quantum wavefunctions. The way energy distributes itself in a storm or a cup of tea is determined by the specific shapes and holes in these quantum structures. Researchers previously tried to solve this with classical mechanics, but the math of the very small provides the missing link. This connection means we can use quantum computing tools to finally predict how complex weather systems or jet engines will behave.
From the abstract
In incompressible flow the viscous force is solenoidal, whereas the Madelung transform of a spinless Schrödinger equation produces only gradient forces. The two are orthogonal, so viscosity cannot arise from Hamiltonian quantum mechanics alone; an open quantum treatment is required. Reducing the $N$-body density matrix to its one-body component and closing the dynamics via Born-Markov yields Lindblad jump operators with $k^2$ scattering rates, which we unravel via quantum state diffusion (QSD) i