Light propagation in a Penrose unilluminable room.

ABSTRACT

Using the finite-difference time-domain method, propagation of light waves is studied in a Penrose unilluminable room. Such a room always has dark (unilluminated) regions, regardless of the position of a point source in it. However, in contrast to the predictions of ray dynamical simulations, a small amount of light propagates into the unilluminated regions via diffraction. We conjecture that this diffraction effect becomes more prominent as the size of the room decreases.