2020/02/11 by D. H. Delphenich, Delphenich, D. H. · 1 citation
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Geophysics and Sensor Technology #Advanced Fiber Laser Technologies #Orbital Angular Momentum in Optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2002.04390
The geodesic equations for optical media whose refractive indices have a non-vanishing gradient are developed. It is shown that when those media are optically isotropic, the light paths will be mull geodesics of a spatial metric that is conformally related to the metric of the ambient space. Various aspects of the optical-mechanical analogy are discussed as they relate to the geodesics of conformally related metrics. Some applications of the concepts of gradient-index optics to general relativity are examined, such as effective indices of refraction for gravitational lensing and Gordon's optical metrics for optical media that are in a state of relative motion with respect to an observer. The latter topic is approached from the standpoint of pre-metric electromagnetism.