Related papers: Extending geometrical optics: A Lagrangian theory …
Waves play an essential role in many aspects of plasma science, such as plasma manipulation and diagnostics. Due to the complexity of the governing equations, approximate models are often necessary to describe wave dynamics. In this…
Linear vector waves, both quantum and classical, experience polarization-driven bending of ray trajectories and polarization dynamics that can be interpreted as the precession of the "wave spin". Both phenomena are governed by an effective…
The propagation of electromagnetic waves in isotropic dielectric media with local dispersion is studied under the assumption of small but nonvanishing $\lambda/l$, where $\lambda$ is the wavelength, and $l$ is the characteristic…
It is standard practice to study the lensing of gravitational waves (GW) using the geometric optics regime. However, in many astrophysical configurations this regime breaks down as the wavelength becomes comparable to the Schwarzschild…
Geometrical optics (GO) is widely used for reduced modeling of waves in plasmas but fails near reflection points, where it predicts a spurious singularity of the wave amplitude. We show how to avoid this singularity by adopting a different…
Ray optics is an intuitive and computationally efficient model for wave propagation through nonuniform media. However, the underlying geometrical-optics (GO) approximation of ray optics breaks down at caustics, erroneously predicting the…
Geometrical optics (GO) is widely used in studies of electromagnetic materials because of its ease of use compared to full-wave numerical simulations. Exact solutions for waves can, however, differ significantly from the GO approximation.…
It is well known that Lagrangian dynamical systems naturally arise in describing wave front dynamics in the limit of short waves (which is called pseudoclassical limit or limit of geometrical optics). Wave fronts are the surfaces of…
The wave description of geometric phase uses the superposition of light waves to explain the geometric phase's origin. While our previous work focused on a basis of linearly polarized waves, here we show that the same concepts can be…
A general linear gauge-invariant equation for dispersive gravitational waves (GWs) propagating in matter is derived. This equation describes, on the same footing, both the usual tensor modes and the gravitational modes strongly coupled with…
Geometrical optics (GO) is often used to model wave propagation in weakly inhomogeneous media and quantum-particle motion in the semiclassical limit. However, GO predicts spurious singularities of the wavefield near reflection points and,…
As an approximate theory that is highly regarded for its computational efficiency, geometrical optics (GO) is widely used for modeling waves in various areas of physics. However, GO fails at caustics, which significantly limits its…
The propagation of high-frequency gravitational waves can be analyzed using the geometrical optics approximation. In the case of large but finite frequencies, the geometrical optics approximation is no longer accurate, and…
When gravitational waves travel from their source to an observer, they interact with matter structures along their path, causing distinct deformations in their waveforms. In this study we introduce a novel theoretical framework for wave…
In general relativity (GR), gravitational waves (GWs) propagate the well-known plus and cross polarization modes which are the signature of a massless spin-2 field. However, diffraction of GWs caused by intervening objects along the line of…
There are conflicting statements in the literature about the gravitational Faraday rotation of the plane of polarization of polarized electromagnetic radiation travelling through a gravitational wave. This issue is reconsidered using a…
The geometric phase in optics (GPIO) is directly associated with the polarization of light. We investigate the physical principles underlying the occurrence of the GPIO for a single-mode light beam propagating in a single-mode optical fiber…
We propose an approach for deriving a broad class of propagation models for inhomogeneously, linearly polarized ``vector'' beams. Our formulation leverages a complex scalar potential along with an appropriately constructed Lagrangian energy…
We present a study of geometric phases in classical wave and polarisation optics using the basic mathematical framework of quantum mechanics. Important physical situations taken from scalar wave optics, pure polarisation optics, and the…
We present some new derivations of the effect of a plane gravitational wave on a light ray. A simple interpretation of the results is that a gravitational wave causes a phase modulation of electromagnetic waves. We arrive at this picture…