Related papers: On the stability of a space vehicle riding on an i…
Flying-focus wakefields, which can propagate with a tunable velocity along the optical axis, are promising solutions to electron dephasing in laser-wakefield accelerators. This is accomplished by a combination of spatio-temporal couplings…
NASA's suborbital program provides an opportunity to conduct unique science experiments above Earth's atmosphere and is a pipeline for the technology and personnel essential to future space astrophysics, heliophysics, and atmospheric…
Designing for rotational stability can dramatically affect the geometry of a space station. If improperly designed, the rotating station could end up catastrophically tumbling end-over-end. Active stabilization can address this problem;…
Photonic crystals allow unprecedented control over how light is confined, propagates, and interacts with matter. Their development has had a transformative impact on optics and physics, and they remain the central platform for both…
As part of NASA's mission to explore habitable planets orbiting nearby stars, this paper explores the detection and characterization capabilities of a 4-m space telescope plus 50-m starshade located at the Earth-Sun L2 point, a.k.a. the New…
This experimental study investigates a new technique to keep a satellite in orbit utilizing electrodynamics. The technique consists of establishing a charge on a satellite such that the body's motion through a planetary magnetic field…
In this paper we propose a notion of stability, that we call $\epsilon -N$-stability, for systems of particles interacting via Newton's gravitational potential, and orbiting a much bigger object. For these systems the usual thermodynamical…
We report a novel scheme to generate laser-induced, ultrafast, intense (Tesla scale), spatially isolated, magnetic fields. Three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations show that a femtosecond azimuthally-polarized infrared vector beam,…
A solar sail is one of the most promising space exploration system because of its theoretically infinite specific impulse using solar radiation pressure (SRP). Recently, some researchers proposed "transformable spacecrafts" that can…
Nanoscale hydrodynamic instability of ring-like molten rims around ablative microholes produced in nanometer-thick gold films by tightly focused nanosecond-laser pulses was experimentally explored in terms of laser pulse energy and film…
Asteroid body-fixed hovering problem using nonideal solar sail models in a compact form with controllable sail area is investigated in this paper. The nonlinear dynamic equations for the hovering problem are constructed for a spherically…
The magnetic droplet soliton is a large amplitude, coherently precessing wave state that exists in ferromagnetic thin films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. To effectively sustain a droplet, magnetic damping can be locally…
Engineering strain critically affects the properties of materials and has extensive applications in semiconductors and quantum systems. However, the deployment of strain-engineered nanocatalysts faces challenges, particularly in maintaining…
Balloon-borne astronomy is a unique tool that allows for a level of image stability and significantly reduced atmospheric interference without the often prohibitive cost and long development time-scale that are characteristic of space-borne…
The sky is the limit with regards to the societal impact nanomaterials can have on our lives. However, in this study we show that their potential is out of this world. The planet Mars has an abundant source of calcium sulfate minerals and…
We obtain bounds on the stability of various self-gravitating astrophysical objects using a new measure of shape complexity known as configurational entropy. We apply the method to Newtonian polytropes, neutron stars with an…
Ultra-intense lasers that ionize and accelerate electrons in solids to near the speed of light can lead to kinetic instabilities that alter the laser absorption and subsequent electron transport, isochoric heating, and ion acceleration.…
It has been recently shown that nanobubbles exhibit a remarkable and unexpected stability. The lifetime of nanobubbles, formed either within liquids or on hydrophobic surfaces, can exceed by more than 10 orders of magnitude the theoretical…
A scheme for fast, compact, and controllable acceleration of heavy particles in vacuum is proposed, in which two counterpropagating lasers with variable frequencies drive a beat-wave structure with variable phase velocity, thus allowing for…
Laser propulsion has been proposed for relativistic interstellar flights, but it faces the significant challenge of requiring extremely powerful laser radiation due to the inherently low momentum transfer between the beam and the sail. The…