Re: All Paths Created Equal?

In message <1174025430.239398.153630@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Jim Black <tramspap@xxxxxxxxx> writes

[snip lots of stuff I admit to only superficially skimming]

Any thoughts?

Is there a parallel with a similar question from classical physics about the justification for Huygens' principle? (If not I'll shut up now!)

The answer in that case is the uniqueness theorem. The handwaving argument says that if we already know the fields on some (suitably defined) surface, they are sufficient to uniquely determine the field at the point we're interested in. So we can advance the solution by integrating over the entire set of paths from surface to target, weighting each path according to the Green's function which propagates from that surface point to the target.

Any use?

--
Richard Herring
.