Related papers: All-optical damping forces enhanced by metasurface…
Lightsails using Earth-based lasers for propulsion require passive stabilization to stay within the beam. This can be achieved through the sail's scattering properties, creating optical restoring forces and torques. Undamped restoring…
Lightsails are promising spacecraft that can traverse interstellar distances within decades via radiation-pressure propulsion from high-power lasers. The envisioned missions crucially rely on the sail being confined within the propelling…
Lightsails are a highly promising spacecraft concept that has attracted interest in recent years due to its potential to travel at near-relativistic speeds. Such speeds, which current conventional crafts cannot reach, offer tantalizing…
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…
Achieving relativistic flight to enable extrasolar exploration is one of the dreams of humanity and the long term goal of our NASA Starlight program. We derive a fully relativistic solution for the motion of a spacecraft propelled by…
We consider a special relativistic effect, known as the Poynting-Robertson effect, on various types of trajectories of solar sails. Since this effect occurs at order $v^{\phi}/c$, where $v^{\phi}$ is the tangential speed relative to the…
Light can exert forces on objects, promising to propel a meter-scale lightsail to near the speed of light. The key to address many challenges in such an ambition hinges on the nanostructuring of lightsails to tailor their optical scattering…
Lightsail spacecraft, propelled to relativistic velocities via photon pressure using high power density laser radiation, offer a potentially new route to space exploration within and beyond the solar system, extending to interstellar…
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…
Ultrathin lightsails propelled by laser radiation pressure to relativistic speeds are currently the most promising route for flyby-based exoplanet exploration. However, there has been a notable lack of experimental characterization of key…
The quintessential hallmark distinguishing metasurfaces from traditional optical components is the engineering of subwavelength meta-atoms to manipulate light at will. Enabling this freedom, in a reverse manner, to control objects…
We consider the motion of a light sail that is accelerated by a powerful laser beam. We derive the equations of motion for two proof-of-concept sail designs with damped internal degrees of freedom. Using linear stability analysis we show…
We argue that light sails that are rapidly accelerated to relativistic velocities by lasers must be significantly curved in order to reduce their mechanical stresses and avoid tears. Using an integrated opto-thermo-mechanical model, we show…
The recoil optical force that acts on emitters near a surface or waveguide relies on near-field directionality and conservation of momentum. It features desirable properties uncommon in optical forces, such as the ability to produce it via…
One proposed method for spacecraft to reach nearby stars is by accelerating sails using either solar radiation pressure or directed energy. This idea constitutes the thesis behind the Breakthrough Starshot project, which aims to accelerate…
We revisit the exact microscopic equations (in differential, and equivalent integral form) ruling a relativistic cold plasma after the plane-wave Ansatz, without customary approximations. We show that in the Eulerian description the motion…
Achieving laser-driven, reflective, relativistic light sails would represent a tremendous breakthrough for humankind, allowing us to advance our understanding of the solar system and deep space far beyond what we know from space probes,…
Relativistic flying mirrors in plasmas are realized as thin dense electron (or electron-ion) layers accelerated by high-intensity electromagnetic waves to velocities close to the speed of light in vacuum. The reflection of an…
Relativistic electron beams produced by intense lasers over short distances have important applications in high energy density physics and medical technologies. Vacuum laser acceleration with plasma mirrors injectors has garnered…
An algorithm is demonstrated that performs first-principles tracking of relativistic charged-particles. A covariant approach is used which relies on retarded vector potentials for trajectory integration instead of performing electromagnetic…