Monday 27 October 2014

waves - Why is Huygens' principle only valid in an odd number of spatial dimensions?


Apparently Huygens' principle is only valid in an odd number of spatial dimensions:



Why is this?



[EDIT] This is somewhat perplexing, since AFAIK it's pretty common to teach freshmen about double- and single-slit diffraction using a two-dimensional analysis and invoking Huygens' principle. Does this work only because there's an ignored third axis of translational symmetry?


I wonder if it's possible to gain insight by making a grid and doing sort of a finite-element analysis.




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