Self-stabilization of light sails by damped internal degrees of freedom

Abstract

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 that perturbations of the sail movement in all lateral degrees of freedom can be damped passively. This analysis also shows complicated behaviour akin to that associated with exceptional points in PT-symmetric systems in optics and quantum mechanics. The excess heat that is produced by the damping mechanism is likely to be substantially smaller than the expected heating due to the partial absorption of the incident laser beam by the sail.

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References in corpus (3)

• The physics of exceptional points
• Topological Transition in a Non-Hermitian Quantum Walk
• Stability of a Light Sail Riding on a Laser Beam

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Structural Stability of a Lightsail for Laser-Driven Interstellar Flight
• Poynting-Robertson damping of laser beam driven lightsails
• Towards Stable Interstellar Flight: Levitation of a Laser-Propelled Sailcraft*
• Analyzing the acceleration time and reflectance of light sails made from homogeneous and core-shell spheres
• Photonic Lightsails: Fast and Stable Propulsion for Interstellar Travel
• Reflection from Inclined, Relativistic Light Sails