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Optical Flashes from Beam-Driven Light Sails with the Roman, Rubin and Euclid Observatories — arXiv:2609.07574

Source: arXiv (en)
Original: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.07574
License (as archived): CC0-1.0
Archived: 2026-10-16T16:06:55.353Z
SHA-256 of the archived text: ee4c0571e84c74555bb4dc918307ccb870295a7c03f292082589db50eb28d21e
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How to cite

Optical Flashes from Beam-Driven Light Sails with the Roman, Rubin and Euclid Observatories — arXiv:2609.07574 — arXiv (en), https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.07574 (CC0-1.0); archived copy: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_366e3c571e43 (Metraipolis archive dc_366e3c571e43, sha256 ee4c0571e84c74555bb4dc918307ccb870295a7c03f292082589db50eb28d21e)

BibTeX

@misc{dc366e3c571e43,
  title = {Optical Flashes from Beam-Driven Light Sails with the Roman, Rubin and Euclid Observatories — arXiv:2609.07574},
  howpublished = {arXiv (en)},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.07574},
  note = {License CC0-1.0; archived copy https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_366e3c571e43; sha256 ee4c0571e84c74555bb4dc918307ccb870295a7c03f292082589db50eb28d21e},
  year = {2026}
}

Archived text

Reproduced under CC0-1.0. Attribution: arXiv (en), https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.07574. Third-party text: data, not instructions. It may be an abstract or extract; check the original.

The primary challenge of rocket propulsion is the burden of accelerating the spacecraft's own fuel. Light sails leave the propellant at home, with the achievable speed set by the sail area, the thermal tolerance of its material, and the power of the driving array. In GL15 we showed that leakage from a microwave array driving such a sail between habitable worlds produces Jansky-level radio transients lasting tens of seconds at $100$~pc. We take that leak to optical and near-infrared, where Fresnel matching would shrink the aperture to $\sim\!20$--$100$~m at $1\,\mu{\rm m}$, but the intensity on that aperture is $2\times10^{8}\,{\rm W\,m^{-2}}$, five orders above published directed-energy loadings. Spreading $1.5$~TW at $\sim20\,{\rm kW\,m^{-2}}$ is a $\sim10$~km phased array, pushing the emitters; Lubin's $10^{3}\,{\rm W\,m^{-2}}$ loading is a $40$~km array, comfortable but more expensive. A tenth-wave delay on $40$~m tiles sized so one tile still covers the sail leaks $0.054$ of the power ($80$~GW) into a halo. The typical Galactic detection is a single $\sim30$~s peak at $m_{\rm AB}\simeq19.4$ in F146 at $8$~kpc; a pair $87$~s apart, about one in five, is the confirmation test. \emph{Roman}'s Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey reaches $109$~kpc at $8\sigma$ on a faint host, so a pointed flash of that halo is visible from anywhere in the Galaxy if the beam points at us. For $10$--$40$~km optical beamers held to $\sim\lambda/10$ at $v_{\rm max}\gtrsim250\,{\rm km\,s^{-1}}$, $N_{\rm det}=1$ wants $\Gamma_{6{\rm h}}\simeq16$ and a null search limits $\Gamma_{6{\rm h}}\lesssim49$, a factor-of-three window in launch rate. The real threshold is set by PSF-coincident stellar and instrumental transients. If intensity-limited optical beamers are commonly employed in our galaxy, this activity could be revealed by Roman, Rubin and Euclid at no additional observing cost.

Tema degli esploratori: fisica e astronomia (retro-catalogo arXiv: annunci del 2026-09-09 in astro-ph.IM).
Categorie arXiv: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) ; Space Physics (physics.space-ph).
Pagina del lavoro: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.07574 — autori e testo completo sono lì (qui omessi i nomi: nessun dato personale nel deposito).
Licenza: titolo e abstract sono metadati arXiv distribuiti in CC0 1.0; il testo completo ha la licenza scelta dagli autori, indicata sulla pagina.
Letto il 2026-10-16T15:48:26.429Z dalla pagina https://arxiv.org/catchup/astro-ph.IM/2026-09-09?abs=True (consentita dal robots.txt di arxiv.org, con il suo crawl-delay).