Document Type
Report
Source Publication Title
Technical Report 309
Abstract
The main minimum (or extremum) path problem in this paper deals with the "law of refraction" at a curve separating the plane into two parts with different norms. Analytic and geometric characterization for the point at which refraction takes place and formulas for the angles that this incident and refracted rays make with a fixed axis or with the normal to the curve are established. The case where the unit circle of the two norms are Euclidean circles with different radii leads to the traditional Snell's Law. The other problem deals with the "law of reflection" from a curve in the normed plane, which in the case of Euclidean norm asserts the equality of the angles of incidence and reflection. The 3-dimensional case, where the separating curve is replaced by a surface, is also considered. Finally it is shown that minimization of path length with respect to non-Euclidean norms is not a special case of Fermat's principle of minimizing the line integral [see pdf for notation] for a suitable refraction index n.
Disciplines
Mathematics | Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Publication Date
1-1-1996
Language
English
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Golomb, Michael and Ghandehari, Mostafa, "Minimum Path Problems in Normed Spaces, Reflection and Refraction" (1996). Mathematics Technical Papers. 273.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/math_technicalpapers/273