inverse fresnel drag
- From: Hai Siong <seabike333@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2006 14:52:49 +0000 (UTC)
Hi all,
would like to seek some advice on the lorentz transformations between two
inertial frames, each in a different refractive medium. suppose a moving
observer (with speed v) in vacuum observes light propagation in the opposite
direction, he would observe the speed of light to be
(c/n + v)/(1 + v/nc )
which is the formula for the fresnel drag. For the observer in the medium,
what would he observe for the speed of light propagation in vaccum to be? If
we adopt the usual velocity addition formula - but with c --> c/n, one
obtains
(c + v)/(1 + vn^2/c )
but this would imply (i) as he increases his speed in the opposite
direction, the observed speed of light slows down (ii) if he moves in the
same direction (thus v<0) the observed speed of light exceeds c, and in fact
there is a singularity at v = -c/n^2.
I have checked with available literature and found an old reference dated
1941 by Walter Michels and Patterson 'Special Relativity in Refracting
Media' published in Physical Review. If I read this paper correctly, it
gives the above formula also. The rest, especially the recent ones, speaks
about using GR to analyze such problems, eg. optical black holes,
superluminal light yet not violating causality, etc... but I have not seen a
discussion which directly attacks the problem above.
Thanks!
Hai Siong
.
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