Related papers: Radiation Pressure on a Diffractive Sailcraft
Conventional surface-relief gratings are inefficient at deflecting normally-incident light by large angles. This constrains their use in many applications and limits the overall efficiency of any optical instrument integrating gratings.…
We analyse the potential of the electric solar wind sail for solar system space missions. Applications studied include fly-by missions to terrestrial planets (Venus, Mars and Phobos, Mercury) and asteroids, missions based on non-Keplerian…
We introduce some new experiments where light diffraction is demonstrated with simple elements: white light diffraction with a coin, construction of a diffractive lens by holography, diffraction properties in digital discs and an…
The past decade has witnessed the development of a large variety of new flat optics referred to as metasurfaces [1]. These metasurfaces are relying on arrays of a large variety of phase shifting elements. This article aims at presenting a…
We give a general design method for finding the passive, reciprocal surface impedance tensor required to enact any wave transformation. We do this through characterising the surface in terms of a tensorial surface impedance, showing that a…
The rate and energy efficiency of wireless channels can be improved by deploying software-controlled metasurfaces to reflect signals from the source to the destination, especially when the direct path is weak. While previous works mainly…
An approach has been developed where the Smith-Purcell radiation (SPR), i.e. emission of electrons moving close to a periodic structure, is treated as the resonant diffraction radiation. Simple formulas have been designed for the SPR…
Dielectric metasurfaces require high refractive index contrast materials for optimum performance. This requirement imposes a severe restraint; devices have either been demonstrated at wavelengths of 700nm and above using high-index…
A metallic film of arbitrary thickness is considered. We show that the problem of description of surface plasma oscillations (surface plasmons) with reflection boundary conditions allows analytic solution. Besides, this problem allows…
We study light diffraction in the periodically modulated ultrathin metal films both analytically and numerically. Without modulation these films are almost transparent. The periodicity results in the anomalous effects, such as suppression…
Directly imaging Earth-sized exoplanets with a visible-light coronagraph instrument on a space telescope will require a system that can achieve $\sim10^{-10}$ raw contrast and maintain it for the duration of observations (on the order of…
We introduce a class of metamaterials with uniformly balanced gain and loss associated with complex permittivity and permeability constants. The refractive index of such a balanced pseudo-passive metamaterial is real. An unbounded uniform…
We show that chirping gravitational waves in the LIGO frequency band $f=1 - 5000$ Hz can be gravitationally diffracted by the Sun, due to the coincidence of its Fresnel length $r_F \propto \sqrt{1\, {\rm AU}/f}$ and the solar radius…
In this paper, we explore from a conceptual standpoint the possibility of using natural astrophysical sources to accelerate spacecrafts to relativistic speeds. We focus on light sails and electric sails, which are reliant on momentum…
Exoplanet imaging using the solar gravitational lens is an enticing prospect. The fundamental physical properties of the lens, including its angular resolution and light amplification, promise exceptional capabilities. These expectations,…
Similar to the light, gravitational waves traveling in multiple paths may arrive at the same location if there is a gravitational lens on their way. Apart from the magnification of the amplitudes and the time delay between the gravitational…
With interstellar mission concepts now being under study by various space agencies and institutions, a feasible and worthy interstellar precursor mission concept will be key to the success of the long shot. Here we investigate…
The atmospheres of (exo) planets and moons, as well as reflection nebulae, contain in general independently scattering particles in random orientation and are often supposed to be plane-parallel. Relations are presented for the…
The inversion of a diffraction pattern offers aberration-free diffraction-limited 3D images without the resolution and depth-of-field limitations of lens-based tomographic systems, the only limitation being radiation damage. We review our…
We study experimentally the writing of one- and two-dimensional photorefractive lattices, focusing on the often overlooked transient regime. Our measurements agree well with theory, in particular concerning the ratio of the drift to…