2
$\begingroup$

For this, i am ignoring physical limitations.

Relying only on snell's law of refraction and reflection, would it be theoretically possible to shine a beam of light from a medium of refractive index 1 into a prism with some refractive index n, and have the beam be idefinitely trapped inside the prism due to indefinite total internal reflection?

If not, what is the maximum possible number of total internal reflections before the beam escapes?

  • 1
    A cylinder (with a little disturbance to allow light to enter at one small spot) could trap the light for quite many reflections, in particular if the reflection angle is "irrational".. – 2017-02-14

0 Answers 0