Related papers: Relativistic Effects of Light in Moving Media with…
A moving dielectric appears to light as an effective gravitational field. At low flow velocities the dielectric acts on light in the same way as a magnetic field acts on a charged matter wave. We develop in detail the geometrical optics of…
Light experiences a non-uniformly moving medium as an effective gravitational field, endowed with an effective metric tensor $\tilde{g}^{\mu \nu}=\eta^{\mu \nu}+(n^2-1)u^\mu u^\nu$, $n$ being the refractive index and $u^\mu$ the…
Light in a dielectric medium moves slower than in vacuum. The corresponding electromagnetic field equations are then no longer invariant under ordinary Lorentz transformations, but only under such transformations corresponding to this…
We study the optical paths of the light rays propagating inside a nonlinear moving dielectric media. For the rapidly moving dielectrics we show the existence of a distinguished surface which resembles, as far as the light propagation is…
In [cond-mat/9906332; Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 822 (2000)] and [physics/9906038; Phys. Rev. A 60, 4301 (1999)] Leonhardt and Piwnicki have presented an interesting analysis of how to use a flowing dielectric fluid to generate a so-called…
Observations and theoretical principles suggest that electromagnetic waves, including light, travel more slowly in dielectric media than in vacuum. Maxwell's equations, incorporating material dependent permittivity and permeability,…
The deflection of light rays near gravitating objects can be influenced not only by gravity itself but also by the surrounding medium. Analytical studies of such effects are possible within the geometrical optics approximation, where the…
Nature succeeds in accelerating extended and massive objects to relativistic velocities. Jets in Active Galactic Nuclei and in galactic superluminal sources and gamma-ray bursts fireballs have bulk Lorentz factors from a few to several…
The purpose of this paper is to present mathematical evidence that electromagnetic near-field waves and wave groups, generated by an oscillating electric dipole, propagate much faster than the speed of light as they are generated near the…
We introduce the concept of effective geometry by studying several systems in which it arises naturally. As an example of the power and conciseness of the method, it is shown that a flowing dielectric medium with a linear response to an…
We determine the path of the light around a dielectric vortex described by the relativistic vortex flow of a perfect fluid.
We consider a nonlinear dielectric medium surrounding a static, charged and spherically symmetric compact body which gravitational field is driven by General Relativity (GR). Considering the propagating waves on the dielectric medium, we…
General relativity provides an appropriate framework for addressing the issue of sub- or superluminality as an apparent effect. Even though a massless particle travels on the light cone, its average velocity over a finite path measured by…
We explore the nature of the classical propagation of light through media with strong frequency-dependent dispersion in the presence of a gravitational field. In the weak field limit, gravity causes a redshift of the optical frequency,…
According to the theory of general relativity, masses deflect light in a way similar to convex glass lenses. This gravitational lensing effect is astigmatic, giving rise to image distortions. These distortions allow to quantify cosmic…
Beyond the Newtonian approximation, gravitational fields in general relativity can be described using a formalism known as gravitoelectromagnetism. In this formalism a vector potential, the gravitomagnetic potential, arises as a result of…
Electromagnetism in an inhomogeneous dielectric medium at rest is described using the methods of differential geometry. In contrast to a general relativistic approach the electromagnetic fields are discussed in three-dimensional space only.…
A light beam normally incident upon an uniformly moving dielectric medium is in general subject to bendings due to a transverse Fresnel-Fizeau light drag effect. In conventional dielectrics, the magnitude of this bending effect is very…
The kinematical effect induced by the transversal motion of a gravitational lens on the frequency shift of light has been investigated in detail, while the effect of the radial motion is thought to be much smaller than the transversal one…
Every astrophysical object (dark or not) is a gravitational lens, as well as a receiver/observer of the light from sources lensed by other objects in its neighborhood. For a given pair of source and lens, there is a thin on-axis tubelike…