Lightsail Project

Publications

 

Atwater group

  1. “Materials challenges for the Starshot lightsail,” Nature Materials (2018).

  2. “Nanophotonic Heterostructures for Efficient Propulsion and Radiative Cooling of Relativistic Light Sails,” Nano Letters (2018)

  3. “Self-stabilizing photonic levitation and propulsion of nanostructured macroscopic objects,” Nature Photonics (2019).

  4. “Self-Stabilizing Silicon Nitride Lightsails,” Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics, OSA Technical Digest (2020)

  5. “Restoring Optical Forces and Torques for Passive Stabilization of Microscopic Lightsails,” SPIE Optics and Photonics, San Diego, CA (2021)

  6. “Optical characterization of silicon nitride metagrating-based lightsails for self-stabilization,” ACS Photonics (2022)

  7. “Radiation Pressure Propulsion of Structurally Integrated Lightsails with Embedded Payloads,” Spring MRS (2022)

  8. “Passively Stabilized Dynamics of Flexible Metagrating-Based Laser-Propelled Lightsails,” Spring MRS (2022)

  9. “Dynamically Stable Radiation Pressure Propulsion of Flexible Lightsails for Interstellar Exploration,” Nature Comm (2024).

  10. “Direct Radiation Pressure Measurements for Lightsail Membranes,” Nature Photonics [in press], ArXiv (2024)

 

Bargatin, Jariwala, & Raman groups

  1. “Ultrabroadband 2D-material Based Nanophotonic Control of Reflection and Thermal Emission for Laser Lightsails,” MRS (2021)

  2. “A mechanical analysis of planar and corrugated metamaterials as relativistic light sails for interstellar travel,” MRS (2021)

  3. “Multi-Scale Photonic Emissivity Engineering for Relativistic Lightsail Thermal Regulation,” Nano Letters (2021)

  4. “Relativistic Light Sails Need to Billow,” Nano Letters (2021)

 

Boltasseva & Shalaev groups

  1. "Optimizing Startshot lightsail design: a generative network-based approach", ACS Photonics (2021)

  2. “Advancing Photonic Design and Quantum Circuitry with Machine Learning,” META (2022)

  3. “Machine-Learning-Assisted Photonics,” International Workshop on Structured materials and structured light (2022)

  4. “Advancing Photonics with Machine Learning,” 295th IUVSTA Workshop on Plasmonic Thin Films: Theory, Synthesis and Applications (2022)

 

Brar, Kats, & Jang groups

  1. “Self-Stabilizing Laser Sails Based on Optical Metasurfaces”, ACS Photonics (2019).

  2. “Optical Dielectric Metasurfaces for use as Self-Stabilizing Laser Sails”, Optical Devices and Materials for Solar Energy and Solid-state Lighting, OSA Technical Digest (2019)

  3. “Photonic Forces on Dielectric Metasurfaces for Passive Stabilization of Laser Propelled Spacecraft”, APS March Meeting (2019)

  4. “Thermal runaway of silicon-based laser sails,” Advanced Optical Materials (2022)

  5. “Temperature-dependent optical properties of materials for light-sail applications,” SPIE (2022)

  6. “Effect of Dust and Hot Spots on the Thermal Stability of Laser Sails,” Nano Letters (2023)

 

de Sterke group

  1. “Self-stabilization of light sails by damped internal degrees of freedom”, Physical Review Applied (2021)

Fan group

  1. “Inverse Design of Lightweight Broadband Reflector for Relativistic Lightsail Propulsion,” ACS Photonics (2020).

  2. “Inverse design of relativistic lightsail for efficient propulsion,” Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics, OSA Technical Digest (2021)

  3. “Adaptive four-level modeling of laser cooling of solids,” Applied Physics Letters (2021)

  4. “Laser Cooling Assisted Thermal Management of Lightsails,” ACS Photonics (2022)

 

Fierro group

  1. “Modeling and stability of a laser-driven sail,” American Control Conference (ACC), New Orleans, LA. IEEE (2021)

  2. “Levitation of a laser beam-driven light sail,” IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), Austin, TX, Dec. 2021. (In preparation)

  

Mossallaei group

  1. “Photonic Metasurfaces as Relativistic Light Sails for Doppler-Broadened Stable Beam-Riding and Radiative Cooling”, Laser and Photonics Reviews (2020).

  2. “Inverse Design of Relativistic Meta-sails via Multi-objective Optimization”, Adv. Theory Simul (2021)

 

Norte group

  1. “Pentagonal Photonic Crystal Mirrors: Scalable Lightsails with Enhanced Acceleration via Neural Topology Optimization”, ArXiv (2024)

Povinelli group

  1. “Photonic crystal lightsail with nonlinear reflectivity for increased stability”, Optics Express (2020)

 

Swartzlander & Menon groups

  1. “Stable diffractive beam rider” Optics Letters (2019).

  2. “Experimental Verification of a Bigrating Beam Rider”, Physical Review Letters (2019).

  3. “Optomechanics of a stable diffractive axicon light sail”, European Physical Journal Plus (2020).

  4. “Thin Diffractive Optics for In-Space Propulsion and Attitude Control Via Radiation Pressure”, Flat Optics: Components to Systems 2021, Washington, DC. OSA Technical Digest (2021)

  5. “Parametric control of a diffractive axicon beam rider”, Optics Letters (2021)

Papers of interest to the lightsail community

  1. “Radiation Effects from the Interstellar Medium and Cosmic Ray Particle Impacts on Relativistic Spacecraft” Philip Lubin, Alexander N. Cohen, and Jacob Erlikhman. The Astrophysical Journal (2022)

  2. “Optimal mass and speed for interstellar flyby with directed-energy propulsion” David Messerschmitt, Philip Lubin, Ian Morrison. arXiv (2022)

  3. “Photonic materials for interstellar solar sailing” Artur R. Davoyan, Jeremy N. Munday, Nelson Tabiryan, Grover A. Swartzlander, and Les Johnson.  Optica (2021)

  4. “Progress on the Starshot laser propulsion system” S. Pete Worden, Wesley A. Green, James Schalkwyk, Kevin Parkin, and Robert Q. Fugate.  Applied Optics (2021)

  5. “Damage to Relativistic Interstellar Spacecraft by ISM Impact Gas Accumulation” Jon Drobny, Alexander N. Cohen, Davide Curreli, Philip Lubin, Maria G. Pelizzo, and Maxim Umansky. The Astrophysical Journal (2021) [arXiv]

  6. “Multilayers for directed energy accelerated lightsails” Giovanni Santi, Giulio Favaro, Alain Corso, Marco Bazzan, Roberto Ragazzoni, Philip Lubin, Denis Garoli, Maria Guglielmina Pelizzo. Communications Materials (2022)

  7. “Self-stabilizing curved metasurfaces as a sail for light-propelled spacecrafts” Niels Gieseler, Aso Rahimzadegan, and Carsten Rockstuhl.  Optics Express (2021)

  8. “Light-Sail Photonic Design for Fast-Transit Earth Orbital Maneuvering and Interplanetary Flight” Ho-Ting Tung, Artur Davoyan. arXiv (2021)

  9. “Exploration of the outer solar system with fast and small sailcraft” Slava G Turyshev, Peter Klupar, Abraham Loeb, Zachary Manchester, Kevin Parkin, Edward Witten, S Pete Worden.  arXiv (2020).

  10. “The Breakthrough Starshot System Model” Kevin Parkin.  arXiv (2018)

  11. “Centimeter-Scale Suspended Photonic Crystal Mirrors” João P. Moura, Richard A. Norte, Jingkun Guo, Clemens Schäfermeier, and Simon Gröblacher. Optics Express (2018).

  12. “A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight” Philip Lubin. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society [arXiv] (2016)

  13. “Starship Sails Propelled by Cost-Optimized Directed Energy” James Benford. JBIS [arXiv] (2012)

  14. “Microwave beam-driven sail flight experiments” James Benford, Gregory Benford, Keith Goodfellow, Raul Perez, Henry Harris, and Timothy Knowles.  AIP Conference Proceedings (2001)