文摘
A new approach to the study of propagation of plane light waves in anisotropic media, based on the local properties of second order symmetric tensors is described. First, the eikonal equation for anisotropic media is obtained following an alternative procedure based on the propagation of field discontinuities. It is emphasized that eikonal equation is an exact derivation from Maxwell equations. Also, an alternative expression for Fresnel's equation is introduced.