Related papers: Optical geometries
Geometrical optical illusions have been object of many studies due to the possibility they offer to understand the behaviour of low-level visual processing. They consist in situations in which the perceived geometrical properties of an…
We establish a uniform estimate for the injectivity radius of the past null cone of a point in a general Lorentzian manifold foliated by spacelike hypersurfaces and satisfying an upper curvature bound. Precisely, our main assumptions are,…
Using Cartan's equivalence method for point transformations we obtain from first principles the conformal geometry associated with third order ODEs and a special class of PDEs in two dimensions. We explicitly construct the null tetrads of a…
Restrictions are obtained on the topology of a compact divergence-free null hypersurface in a four-dimensional Lorentzian manifold whose Ricci tensor is zero or satisfies some weaker conditions. This is done by showing that each null…
One considers geometry with the intransitive equaivalence relation. Such a geometry is a physical geometry, i.e. it is described completely by the world function, which is a half of the squared distance function. The physical geometry…
In this paper, we define the notion of eikonal helix and eikonal slant helix for null curves in the 4-dimensional Lorentzian manifold M 1 4 and give a characterization for the null curve to be the null eikonal helix. Moreover, we indicate…
A pedagogical but concise overview of Riemannian geometry is provided, in the context of usage in physics. The emphasis is on defining and visualizing concepts and relationships between them, as well as listing common confusions,…
Differential geometry may be generalized to allow infinitesimals to any order. The purpose of the present contribution is to show that the theory so developed expands received geometrical ideas in an interesting way, rich in potential for…
We study the geometry and holonomy of semi-Riemannian, time-like metric cones that are indecomposable, i.e., which do not admit a local decomposition into a semi-Riemannian product. This includes irreducible cones, for which the holonomy…
A geometric conception is a method of a geometry construction. The Riemannian geometric conception and a new T-geometric one are considered. T-geometry is built only on the basis of information included in the metric (distance between two…
We summarize the main ideas of General Relativity and Lorentzian geometry, leading to a proof of the simplest of the celebrated Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems. The reader is assumed to be familiar with Riemannian geometry and point…
New ray-optical elements allow generalized refraction of light rays, but geometry imposes limitations on possible mappings between the positions of an object and its geometric image. Here I study the case of an infinite, planar,…
We investigate geometric properties of indecomposable but non-irreducible Lorentzian manifolds, which are total spaces of circle bundles. We investigate under which conditions these manifolds are complete and give examples which fulfill the…
The theory of gravitational lensing is reviewed from a spacetime perspective, without quasi-Newtonian approximations. More precisely, the review covers all aspects of gravitational lensing where light propagation is described in terms of…
The `observer space' of a Lorentzian spacetime is the space of future-timelike unit tangent vectors. Using Cartan geometry, we first study the structure a given spacetime induces on its observer space, then use this to define abstract…
We define a concept of Lorentzian angle that works even when one or both of the directions involved is null (lightlike). Such angles play a role in Regge-Calculus, in the boundary- and corner- terms for the gravitational action, and in the…
Trajectories of light rays in a static spacetime are described by unparametrised geodesics of the Riemannian optical metric associated with the Lorentzian spacetime metric. We investigate the uniqueness of this structure and demonstrate…
The standard definition of gravitational lensing magnification is generalized to Lorentzian spacetimes, and it is shown how it can be interpreted geometrically in terms of the van Vleck determinant and the exponential map. This is joint…
It is proposed that the mathematical formalism that is most appropriate for the study of spatially non-integrable cosmological models is the transverse geometry of a one-dimensional foliation (congruence) defined by a physical observer. By…
This article describes an entirely algebraic construction for developing conformal geometries, which provide models for, among others, the Euclidean, spherical and hyperbolic geometries. On one hand, their relationship is usually shown…