Friday, 23 June 2017

optics - Examples in which the light maximizes the optical path length


I posted a similar question about geodesics on Math.SE. Many sources (Wikibooks for instance) claim that the light could maximize the optical path length in some cases. But I don't think it's actually true since between two points I can always imagine a path with arbitrary length. Therefore, or the light minimizes the optical length or it's stationary (neither maximum nor minimum). My question is: is the trajectory in red in the figure below a local minimum or a stationary curve? enter image description here


If I'm wrong, please provide some examples which the light propagates in trajectory of maximum length.




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