Optimizing Startshot lightsail design: a generative network-based approach
Abstract
The Starshot lightsail project aims to build an ultralight spacecraft ("nanocraft") that can reach Proxima Centauri b in approximately 20 years, requiring propulsion with a relativistic velocity of ~60 000 km/s. The spacecraft's acceleration approach currently under investigation is based on applying the radiation pressure from a high-power laser array located on Earth to the spacecraft lightsail. However, the practical realization of such a spacecraft imposes extreme requirements to the lightsail's optical, mechanical, thermal properties. Within this work, we apply adjoint topology optimization and variational autoencoder-assisted inverse design algorithm to develop and optimize a silicon-based lightsail design. We demonstrate that the developed framework can provide optimized optical and opto-kinematic properties of the lightsail. Furthermore, the framework opens up the pathways to realizing a multi-objective optimization of the entire lightsail propulsion system, leveraging the previously demonstrated concept of physics-driven compressed space engineering
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2108.12999,
title = {Optimizing Startshot lightsail design: a generative network-based approach},
author = {Zhaxylyk A. Kudyshev and Alexander V. Kildishev and Vladimir M. Shalaev and Alexandra Boltasseva},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.12999},
year = {2021}
}