When both endpoint bundles have the filled circular-cone geometry of etendue of a circular aperture and cone, conservation of etendue givesFor the same refractive index, quadrupling the area halves the sine of the cone half-angle. In the , example, an ideal output of diameter must have , so . The exact result differs from simply halving . Conversely, reducing the diameter to requires a complete forward hemisphere, , as a limiting case.
Equal bounding area and solid angle do not alone prove equal etendue: an actual output can have unoccupied directions or position-direction correlations. The filled-cone equation is an exact model of the specified bundles and a capacity constraint on an optical instrument, not a guarantee of an aberration-free implementation.
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