Abstract

The behavior of a pulsed beam is investigated in a plane-stratified medium. The beam is viewed as a field emerging from a complex space–time source point. Such a source radiates a directional field into real space–time. The transient (complex) ray field is evaluated through a multiple-reflection Bremmer-type analysis, taking the first term (the WKBJ term). Results are obtained through analytic continuation of well-known explicit expressions into complex-valued space–time source coordinates.

© 1988 Optical Society of America

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