相关论文: Images in Christmas Balls

We have recently proposed a model for a regular black hole, or an ultra-compact object, that is premised on having maximally negative radial pressure throughout the entirety of the object's interior. This model can be viewed as that of a…

This paper models light scattering through flat surfaces with finite transmission, reflection and absorption rates, with wave packets approaching the mirror from both sides. While using the same notion of photons as in free space, our model…

We prove that the focal set generated by the reflection of a point source off a translation invariant surface consists of two sets: a curve and a surface. The focal curve lies in the plane orthogonal to the symmetry direction containing the…

Some time ago Wastlund reformulated the Basel problem in terms of a physical system using the proportionality of the apparent brightness of a star to the inverse square of its distance. Inspired by this approach, we give another physical…

Here we are concerned with a special issue of billiard invisibility, where a bounded set with a piecewise smooth boundary in Euclidean space is identified with a body with mirror surface, and the billiard in the complement of the set is…

Shape from shading is a classical inverse problem in computer vision. This shape reconstruction problem is inherently ill-defined; it depends on the assumed light source direction. We introduce a novel mathematical formulation for…

Diffraction is a phenomenon, discussed for centuries from various points of view. The very simple principle, proposed by Huygens [1] and then modified by Fresnel[2], Stokes [3] and Kirchoff [4], allows us to make calculations, substituting…

Reflection and refraction of light can be used to trap small dielectric particles in the geometrical optics regime. Absorption of light is usually neglected in theoretical calculations, but it is known that it occurs in the optical trapping…

Motivated by a recent experiment [J. Eschner {\it et al.}, Nature {\bf 413}, 495 (2001)], we now present a theoretical study on the fluorescence of an atom in front of a mirror. On the assumption that the presence of the distant mirror and…

We study two notions. One is that of spindle convexity. A set of circumradius not greater than one is spindle convex if, for any pair of its points, it contains every short circular arc of radius at least one, connecting them. The other…

Curved refractive objects are common in the human environment, and have a complex visual appearance that can cause robotic vision algorithms to fail. Light-field cameras allow us to address this challenge by capturing the view-dependent…

A beam of light, reflected at a planar interface, does not follow perfectly the ray optics prediction. Diffractive corrections lead to beam shifts; either the reflected beam is displaced (spatial shift) and/or travels in a different…

The works of William Rowan Hamilton in Geometrical Optics are presented, with emphasis on the Malus-Dupin theorem. According to that theorem, a family of light rays depending on two parameters can be focused to a single point by an optical…

We introduce a new type of lens that focuses a plane wave into a spherical one, where light comes from all directions. Our method also suggests the design of ideal optical tweezers or, in the reverse direction, photo-detection of nearly all…

The established way of looking at special relativity is based on Einstein postulates: the principle of relativity and the constancy of the velocity of light. In the most general geometric approach to the theory of special relativity, the…

We propose a novel concept of astrophysical mirroring in the schwarzschild framework, which emerges as a direct consequence of gravitational lensing effects occurring in the immediate vicinity of extremely dense massive objects within…

We present an ab-initio numerical investigation of the internal conical refraction of structured light beams in a biaxial crystal. Starting from the solutions of the Fresnel equation, a theoretical analysis is developed without assuming any…

The simple reflection of a light beam of finite transverse extent from a homogenous interface gives rise to a surprisingly large number of subtle shifts and deflections which can be seen as diffractive corrections to the laws of geometrical…

We present explicit filtration/backprojection-type formulae for the inversion of the spherical (circular) mean transform with the centers lying on the boundary of some polyhedra (or polygons, in 2D). The formulae are derived using the…

This colloquium analyzes the interaction of light with two-dimensional periodic arrays of particles and holes. The enhanced optical transmission observed in the latter and the presence of surface modes in patterned metal surfaces are…