The Geometry of Radiative Transfer

Abstract We present the geometry and symmetries of radiative transfer theory. Our geometrization exploits recent work in the literature that enables to obtain the Hamiltonian formulation of radiative transfer as the semiclassical limit of a phase space representation of electromagnetic theory. Cosphere bundle reduction yields the traditional description over the space of ”positions and directions”, and geometrical optics arises as a special case when energy is disregarded. It is also shown that, in idealized environments, radiative transfer is a Lie-Poisson system with the group of canonical transformations as configuration space and symmetry group.