Introduction
While from a physical point of view the ray model of light propagation is outdated, it is still extremely useful for the design and modelling of optical instruments due to its simplicity and intuitiveness. It is therefore important to understand the connection between the ray model and the more physically correct wave model, in order to determine the former’s limitations and range of usefulness. Such understanding also sheds light into what a ray represents within the wave model: are rays normals to the wavefronts? plane waves? “local plane waves”? flux lines? Gaussian beams (or their centroids)?
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Alonso, M.A. (2014). The Connection between Rays and Waves. In: Osten, W. (eds) Fringe 2013. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36359-7_81
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36359-7_81
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