Optics of nonuniformly moving media

Abstract

A moving dielectric appears to light as an effective gravitational field. At low flow velocities the dielectric acts on light in the same way as a magnetic field acts on a charged matter wave. We develop in detail the geometrical optics of moving dispersionless media. We derive a Hamiltonian and a Lagrangian to describe ray propagation. We elucidate how the gravitational and the magnetic models of light propagation are related to each other. Finally, we study light propagation around a vortex flow. The vortex shows an optical Aharonov-Bohm effect at large distances from the core, and, at shorter ranges, the vortex may resemble an optical black hole.