RAY-TRACING IN COMPLEX MEDIA

Several procedures for ray tracing in complex three-dimensional media with interfaces are presented. Large attention is devoted to the initial value ray tracing problem in which a ray is specified by its initial position and slowness vector direction. Ray equations are introduced in a simple way by using the Hamiltonian formulation. Rays propagating in the vicinity of a reference ray are obtained by perturbation theory. Interfaces are introduced easily in this formulation. In the second part of the paper, several procedures for solving the two-point ray tracing problem are discussed.