Self-Stabilization of Light Sails by Damped Internal Degrees of Freedom

M. Z. Rafat, Holger R. Dullin, Boris T. Kuhlmey, Alessandro Tuniz, Haoyuan Luo, Dibyendu Roy, Sean Skinner, Tristram J. Alexander, Michael S. Wheatland, and C. Martijn de Sterke

Phys. Rev. Applied 17, 024016 – Published 7 February 2022

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: the sail is asymptotically stable. This analysis also shows complicated behavior akin to that associated with exceptional points in PT-symmetric systems in optics and quantum mechanics. We show that 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.

Received 21 June 2021
Revised 5 November 2021
Accepted 6 December 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.17.024016

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Classical mechanics Light-matter interaction Mathematical physics Optomechanics Space science

Coupled oscillators Dynamical systems

Nonlinear DynamicsInterdisciplinary PhysicsGeneral PhysicsAtomic, Molecular & Optical

Authors & Affiliations

M. Z. Rafat ^1,*, Holger R. Dullin ², Boris T. Kuhlmey ¹, Alessandro Tuniz ¹, Haoyuan Luo ¹, Dibyendu Roy ¹, Sean Skinner ¹, Tristram J. Alexander ¹, Michael S. Wheatland ¹, and C. Martijn de Sterke ¹

¹School of Physics, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
²School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

^*mohammad.rafat@sydney.edu.au

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Vol. 17, Iss. 2 — February 2022

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