Conservation Laws and Other Formulas for Families of Rays and Wavefronts and for the Eikonal Equation

Abstract

In the previous studies, the author has obtained conservation laws for the 2D eikonal equation in an inhomogeneous isotropic medium. These laws are divergent identities of the form div F = 0. The vector field F is expressed through a solution to the eikonal equation (the time field), the refractive index (the equation parameter), and their partial derivatives. Besides that, equivalent conservation laws (divergent identities) were found for families of rays and families of wavefronts in terms of their geometric characteristics. Thus, the geometric essence (interpretation) of the conservation laws obtained for the 2D eikonal equation was found. In this paper, 3D analogs of the results obtained are presented: differential conservation laws for the 3D eikonal equation and conservation laws (divergent identities of the form div F = 0) for families of rays and families of wavefronts, the vector field F expressed through classical geometric characteristics of the ray curves: their Frenet basis (the unit tangent vector, principal normal, and binormal), the first curvature, and the second curvature, or through the classical geometric characteristics of the wavefront surfaces: their normal, principal directions, principal curvatures, Gaussian curvature, and mean curvature. All the results have been obtained on the basis of the general vector and geometric formulas (differential conservation laws and some formulas) obtained for families of arbitrary smooth curves, families of arbitrary smooth surfaces, and arbitrary smooth vector fields.