Generalized Fermat's principle and Snell's law for cone structures and applications

Abstract

Fermat's principle is fully generalized to the case where a smooth interface separates two cone structures -- Lorentz-Finsler lightcones -- representing wave propagation in a potentially inhomogeneous, anisotropic, time-dependent and discontinuous medium. The interface, wave source and receiver are assumed to be a hypersurface, a submanifold and a curve in the spacetime, respectively, of any causal character. For a trajectory to fullfil Fermat's principle -- i.e., to be a critical point of the arrival time functional -- its direction must change at the interface, obeying a precise condition that generalizes Snell's law of refraction when the wave crosses the interface, or the law of reflection when it remains in a single medium. Both laws are analyzed in detail to establish the conditions ensuring the existence and uniqueness of refracted and reflected trajectories, and to determine whether they actually minimize the arrival time. Applications to Zermelo's navigation problem and the determination of geodesics in discretized spacetimes are also emphasized.