Ray Optics, Fermat’s Principle, and Applications to General Relativity

This book is about the mathematical theory of light propagation in media on general-relativistic spacetimes. The first part discusses the transition from Maxwell's equations to ray optics. The second part establishes a general mathematical framework for treating ray optics as a theory in its ow...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Perlick, Volker
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Berlin, Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2000, 2000
Edition:1st ed. 2000
Series:Lecture Notes in Physics Monographs
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: Springer Book Archives -2004 - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
LEADER 02484nmm a2200373 u 4500
001 EB000657290
003 EBX01000000000000000510372
005 00000000000000.0
007 cr|||||||||||||||||||||
008 140122 ||| eng
020 |a 9783540466628 
100 1 |a Perlick, Volker 
245 0 0 |a Ray Optics, Fermat’s Principle, and Applications to General Relativity  |h Elektronische Ressource  |c by Volker Perlick 
250 |a 1st ed. 2000 
260 |a Berlin, Heidelberg  |b Springer Berlin Heidelberg  |c 2000, 2000 
300 |a X, 222 p  |b online resource 
505 0 |a From Maxwell’s equations to ray optics -- to Part I -- Light propagation in linear dielectric and permeable media -- Light propagation in other kinds of media -- A mathematical framework for ray optics -- to Part II -- Ray-optical structures on arbitrary manifolds -- Ray-optical structures on Lorentzian manifolds -- Variational principles for rays -- Applications 
653 |a Electrodynamics 
653 |a Gravitation 
653 |a Classical Electrodynamics 
653 |a Mathematical physics 
653 |a Classical and Quantum Gravity 
653 |a Applications of Mathematics 
653 |a Magnetism 
653 |a Mathematics 
653 |a Astrophysics 
653 |a Mathematical Methods in Physics 
041 0 7 |a eng  |2 ISO 639-2 
989 |b SBA  |a Springer Book Archives -2004 
490 0 |a Lecture Notes in Physics Monographs 
028 5 0 |a 10.1007/3-540-46662-2 
856 4 0 |u https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-46662-2?nosfx=y  |x Verlag  |3 Volltext 
082 0 |a 537.6 
520 |a This book is about the mathematical theory of light propagation in media on general-relativistic spacetimes. The first part discusses the transition from Maxwell's equations to ray optics. The second part establishes a general mathematical framework for treating ray optics as a theory in its own right, making extensive use of the Hamiltonian formalism. This part also includes a detailed discussion of variational principles (i.e., various versions of Fermat's principle) for light rays in general-relativistic media. Some applications, e.g. to gravitational lensing, are worked out. The reader is assumed to have some basic knowledge of general relativity and some familiarity with differential geometry. Some of the results are published here for the first time, e.g. a general-relativistic version of Fermat's principle for light rays in a medium that has to satisfy some regularity condition only