Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Half-line (geometry) or ray, half of a line split at an initial point Directed half-line or ray, half of a directed or oriented line split at an initial point; Ray (graph theory), an infinite sequence of vertices such that each vertex appears at most once in the sequence and each two consecutive vertices in the sequence are the two endpoints of an edge in the graph
A meridional ray is a ray that passes through the axis of an optical fiber. A skew ray is a ray that travels in a non-planar zig-zag path and never crosses the axis of an optical fiber. A guided ray, bound ray, or trapped ray is a ray in a multi-mode optical fiber, which is confined by the core.
Each optical element (surface, interface, mirror, or beam travel) is described by a 2 × 2 ray transfer matrix which operates on a vector describing an incoming light ray to calculate the outgoing ray. Multiplication of the successive matrices thus yields a concise ray transfer matrix describing the entire optical system.
A light ray is a line or curve that is perpendicular to the light's wavefronts (and is therefore collinear with the wave vector). A slightly more rigorous definition of a light ray follows from Fermat's principle, which states that the path taken between two points by a ray of light is the path that can be traversed in the least time. [1]
Early ray tracing was always done from the eye, and early researchers such as James Arvo used the term backwards ray tracing to mean shooting rays from the lights and gathering the results. Therefore, it is clearer to distinguish eye-based versus light-based ray tracing.
In differential geometry, a caustic is the envelope of rays either reflected or refracted by a manifold. It is related to the concept of caustics in geometric optics . The ray's source may be a point (called the radiant) or parallel rays from a point at infinity, in which case a direction vector of the rays must be specified.
In Euclidean geometry two rays with a common endpoint form an angle. [14] The definition of a ray depends upon the notion of betweenness for points on a line. It follows that rays exist only for geometries for which this notion exists, typically Euclidean geometry or affine geometry over an ordered field.
Ray tracing of a beam of light passing through a medium with changing refractive index.The ray is advanced by a small amount, and then the direction is re-calculated. Ray tracing works by assuming that the particle or wave can be modeled as a large number of very narrow beams (), and that there exists some distance, possibly very small, over which such a ray is locally straight.