{"paper":{"title":"Generalized Fermat's principle and Snell's law for cone structures and applications","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["math-ph","math.MP"],"primary_cat":"math.DG","authors_text":"Enrique Pend\\'as-Recondo, Miguel \\'Angel Javaloyes, Miguel S\\'anchez, Steen Markvorsen","submitted_at":"2025-09-30T16:35:54Z","abstract_excerpt":"Fermat's principle is fully generalized to the case where a smooth interface separates two cone structures -- Lorentz-Finsler lightcones -- representing wave propagation in a potentially inhomogeneous, anisotropic, time-dependent and discontinuous medium. The interface, wave source and receiver are assumed to be a hypersurface, a submanifold and a curve in the spacetime, respectively, of any causal character. For a trajectory to fullfil Fermat's principle -- i.e., to be a critical point of the arrival time functional -- its direction must change at the interface, obeying a precise condition th"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2509.26492","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2509.26492/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}