Ray helicity: a geometric invariant for multi-dimensional resonant wave conversion
Classical Physics
2009-11-10 v1 General Physics
Abstract
For a multicomponent wave field propagating into a multidimensional conversion region, the rays are shown to be helical, in general. For a ray-based quantity to have a fundamental physical meaning it must be invariant under two groups of transformations: congruence transformations (which shuffle components of the multi-component wave field) and canonical transformations (which act on the ray phase space). It is shown that for conversion between two waves there is a new invariant not previously discussed: the intrinsic helicity of the ray.
Cite
@article{arxiv.physics/0303086,
title = {Ray helicity: a geometric invariant for multi-dimensional resonant wave conversion},
author = {E. R. Tracy and A. N. Kaufman},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:physics/0303086},
year = {2009}
}