Optical rays in a reciprocal-height refractive index

ID: optical-rays-in-a-reciprocal-height-refractive-index

For the refractive index on the upper half-plane, Fermat principle and the Beltrami identity give . The nonvertical rays are arcs of circles centered on ; vertical lines are the remaining rays. These are also geodesics of the Poincaré half-plane model. A ray entering the strip toward decreasing at angle to the vertical has limiting horizontal displacement , at most one. The line is approached only after infinite optical path length because the refractive index diverges there.

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