Optical wing generates lift from light

Scientists hope breakthrough will enable space vehicles to manoeuvre solely via Sun's rays. Jon Cartwright

A time-lapse photo of a microscopic rod lit by a laser from below shows transverse movement, demonstrating lift. Physicists in the United States have demonstrated the optical analogue of an aerofoil a 'lightfoil' that generates lift when passing through laser light. The demonstration, which comes more than a century after the development of the first aeroplanes, suggests that lightfoils could one day be used to manoeuvre objects in the vacuum of outer space using only the Sun's rays. "It's almost like the first stages of what the Wright brothers did," says lead author Grover Swartzlander, a physicist at the Rochester Institute of Technology, New York, whose study appears in Nature Photonics today1. The principle of a lightfoil is similar to that of an aerofoil: both require the pressure to be greater on one side than the other, which generates a force, or lift, in that direction. With an aerofoil, the pressure difference arises because air must pass faster over the longer, curved side to rejoin the air passing underneath. With the lightfoil, the pressure comes from light rather than air. Such 'radiation pressure' was theorized by physicists James Clerk Maxwell and Adolfo Bartoli in the late nineteenth century, and exists because photons impart momentum to an object when they reflect off or pass through it. It is the reason, for example, that comet dust tails always point away from the Sun the Sun's rays push them that way.

Light pressure
Grover and his colleagues predicted that radiation pressure could generate lift in a lightfoil having performed computer analyses to learn how light rays refract and reflect as they enter different shaped objects. Success came in the form of a semi-cylindrical rod, which showed from the analyses that a large portion of incident light rays should leave in a perpendicular direction. The side where they leave would experience the greatest radiation pressure and, therefore, lift. To test this prediction, Grover and his group dropped plastic semi-cylindrical rods, just a few micrometres in length, into water. When they shone a laser beam onto the rods from beneath, the rods moved upwards thanks to the direct levitating force of the laser but they also moved

to the side. It was this latter, perpendicular motion that, the researchers claim, proves the existence of optical lift. One application of the lightfoil would be to control the direction of space vehicles that rely on radiation pressure for thrust, such as the experimental solar-sail spacecraft LightSail-1, which the Planetary Society, a US public space organization based in Pasadena, California, is planning to launch later this year. The lightfoil concept could also be used to power micromachines, or transport particles in liquids. For these last applications, Matt Eichenfield, a physicist who specializes in nanoscale optical and mechanical systems at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, believes it would be more useful if the lift could be realized for any transparent object. This might be possible, he says, if the problem were considered backwards, so that it is the shape of the laser beam, rather than the object, that is tailored. Eichenfield adds, however: "It's an interesting effect. And it's key, as this field of nanomechanics combined with optics becomes more important, that we revisit the simplest phenomena, as they've done here."

References
1.

Swartzlander, G. A., Peterson, T. J., Artusio-Glimpse, A. B. & Raisanen, A. D. Nature Photonics advance online publication doi:10.1038/NPHOTON.2010.266 (2010)

<source: nature.com>http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101205/full/news.2010.647.html#B1

Optical lift
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Optical lift is an optical analogue of aerodynamic lift, in which a cambered refractive object with differently shaped top and bottom surfaces experiences a stable transverse lift force when placed in a uniform stream of light.[1]

Contents
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1 Discovery 2 Potential uses 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Discovery
Light has been known for some time to be capable of pushing objects and this is the principle behind the solar sail, which uses light to push vehicles along in outer space. Now, a 2010 study by physicist Grover Swatzlander and colleagues of the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York shows light is also capable of creating the more complex force of "lift", which is the force generated by airfoils that make an airplane rise upwards as it travels forward. His study was published on December 2010 by Nature Photonics journal. Swartzlander predicted, observed and experimentally verified at a micrometer-scale that when applying a beam of laser light to a semi-cylindrical refractive rod, it automatically torques into a stable angle of attack, and then exhibit uniform motion.[1] The experiment began as computer models that suggested when light is shone on tiny objects shaped like a wing, a stable lift force would be created. Then the researchers decided to do physical experiments in the laboratory, and they created tiny, transparent, micrometer-sized rods that were flat on one side and rounded on the other, rather like airplane wings. They immersed the lighfoils in water and bombarded them with 130 mW ultraviolet laser light from underneath the chamber. As predicted, the lightfoils were pushed upwards by the light, but they also moved sideways in a direction perpendicular to the beam of light. They discovered not only that the rods experienced stable lift, but that there were several angles that the rod tended to align itself to. Symmetrical spheres tested did not exhibit this same lift effect.[2] In optical lift, created by a "lightfoil", the lift is created within the transparent object as light shines through it and is refracted by its inner surfaces. In the lightfoil rods a greater proportion of light leaves in a direction perpendicular to the beam and this side therefore experiences a larger radiation pressure and hence, lift.[2]

[edit] Potential uses

The 2010 discovery of stable optical lift is considered by some physicists to be "most surprising".[3] Unlike optical tweezers, an intensity gradient is not required to achieve a transverse force. Many rods may therefore be lifted simultaneously in a single quasi-uniform beam of light. Swartzlander and his team propose using optical lift to power micromachines, transport microscopic particles in a liquid, or to help on self-alignment and steering of solar sails,[3] a form of spacecraft propulsion for interstellar space travel. Solar sails are generally designed to harness light to "push" a spacecraft, whereas Swartzlander designed their lightfoil to lift in a perpendicular direction; this is where the idea of being able to steer a future solar sail spacecraft may be applied.[4] Swartzlander said the next step would be to test lightfoils in air and experiment with a variety of materials with different refractive properties, and with other wavelengths of light.[2]

[edit] See also

Aerodynamic lift IKAROS - (Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun) Laser propulsion Optical force Solar sail

[edit] References
1.

^ a b Swartzlander Jr, Grover A.; Timothy J. Peterson, Alexandra B. Artusio-Glimpse and Alan D. Raisanen (05 December 2010). "Stable optical lift". Nature Photonics. doi: 10.1038/nphoton.2010.266. http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphoton.2010.266.html. Retrieved 2010-12-08. ^ a b c Edwards, Lin (December 7, 2010). "Optical lifting demonstrated for the first time". Physorg. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-optical-video.html. Retrieved 2010-1209. ^ a b Palmer, Jason (8 December 2010). "'Lightfoil' idea shows light can provide lift". BBC News. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11927793. Retrieved 201012-08. ^ Kaku, Michio (December 7, 2010). "Optical Lift May Allow Us to Steer Solar Sail Spacecrafts and Nano Devices". Big Think. http://bigthink.com/ideas/25305. Retrieved 2010-12-08.

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(source: wiki)

Aerofoil working Imagine a totally flat wing with a single hinged control surface at the back. In fact, don't imagine it, take a flat piece of paper and make yourself a "Concord-style" paper plane. Tear two small flaps, one in the trailing edge of each wing. I think we can agree that the wings are flat, yes? (Or at least the upper and lower sides of the wings are not different lengths). Now bend the flaps slightly down. Throw the plane in a flat trajectory and you will see that it goes up initially (obviously it will lose speed and fall down but that's not the wings' fault there's no engine). This is because the flap is directing the air down as it leaves the wing. If you bend the flaps upwards you'll see that the plane goes down (or can fly upside down). Clearly if you make the wing curved from the word go you have lift built-in, but it's got nothing to do with the two sides being of different lengths and the air somehow being forced to travel at different speeds because of this. ------------------------------------Optical tweezers (originally called "single-beam gradient force trap") are a scientific instrument that uses a highly-focused laser beam to provide an attractive or repulsive force (typically on the order of piconewtons), depending on the refractive index mismatch to physically hold and move microscopic dielectric objects. Optical tweezers have been particularly successful in studying a variety of biological systems in recent years.