  In this article, we study the intersection (or union) of the convex hull of N
confocal paraboloids (or ellipsoids) of revolution. This study is motivated by
a Minkowski-type problem arising in geometric optics. We show that in each of
the four cases, the combinatorics is given by the intersection of a power
diagram with the unit sphere. We prove the complexity is O(N) for the
intersection of paraboloids and Omega(N^2) for the intersection and the union
of ellipsoids. We provide an algorithm to compute these intersections using the
exact geometric computation paradigm. This algorithm is optimal in the case of
the intersection of ellipsoids and is used to solve numerically the far-field
reflector problem.
