Jumbo superwalkers and binary droplet mergers

Self-propelled silicone oil droplets that bounce and walk on a vibrating fluid bath have attracted significant attention as a macroscopic analog of quantum systems and as a model active matter system. I will present our ongoing experimental investigations of walking and superwalking droplets using a table-top setup composed of a vibration table, a droplet generator, and a controlled illumination system. I will describe the experimental setup that I built to investigate this system and present results of ongoing experiments. Our focus is on jumbo superwalking droplets - a special class of superwalking droplets with significantly larger size and more pronounced deformations. Such droplets expand the accessible parameter space of walking droplets and display rich dynamical features when interacting with each other. I will also briefly report on our ongoing investigations of spiral coalescence of droplet pairs: two orbiting walking droplets that gradually spiral inward and merge, reminiscent of inspiraling mergers in gravitational systems. Together, these results highlight new dynamical regimes of walking droplets with cross-disciplinary relevance, linking droplet hydrodynamics, active matter, and analogies to astrophysical processes.