Moving-mirror Doppler shift

ID: moving-mirror-doppler-shift

A mirror receding at velocity from normally incident light produces two applications of the relativistic Doppler effect, one into the mirror rest frame and one back to the observer. In that rest frame, reflection preserves frequency. Consequently . Equivalently, continuity of wave phase on the moving surface gives , with and . For , the fractional frequency change is to first order.

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