Optimized Bragg Grating Liquid Crystal Solar Sail
Abstract
We have designed a thin 3-layer sun-facing diffractive Bragg reflector comprised of a chiral polymeric liquid crystal film. Using Rigorous Coupled-Wave Analysis (RCWA), the stack was optimized to maximize the transverse radiation pressure force across the wavelength band 0.47 - 1.67 micrometers. The optimized structure operates on a single polarization state of light. A two structure stack, each operating on a different state of polarization, is predicted to provide a transverse momentum transfer efficiency of 51%. This study demonstrates how a wavelength selective Bragg grating may be used both as a sunshade to scatter sunlight away from the Earth, and as a solar sail for maintaining a prescribed orbit (such as the Earth-Sun L1 point) owing to the momentum transfer efficiency.
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BibTeX
@misc{sasanapuri2026optimized,
title = {{Optimized Bragg Grating Liquid Crystal Solar Sail}},
author = {Sai Keshav Sasanapuri and Xiulian and Shan and Grover A. Swartzlander Jr},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.28942},
eprint = {2610.28942},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.28942},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Optimized Bragg Grating Liquid Crystal Solar Sail
AU - Sai Keshav Sasanapuri
AU - Xiulian
AU - Shan
AU - Grover A. Swartzlander Jr
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/20
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.28942
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.28942
AB - We have designed a thin 3-layer sun-facing diffractive Bragg reflector comprised of a chiral polymeric liquid crystal film. Using Rigorous Coupled-Wave Analysis (RCWA), the stack was optimized to maximize the transverse radiation pressure force across the wavelength band 0.47 - 1.67 micrometers. The optimized structure operates on a single polarization state of light. A two structure stack, each operating on a different state of polarization, is predicted to provide a transverse momentum transfer efficiency of 51%. This study demonstrates how a wavelength selective Bragg grating may be used both as a sunshade to scatter sunlight away from the Earth, and as a solar sail for maintaining a prescribed orbit (such as the Earth-Sun L1 point) owing to the momentum transfer efficiency.
ER -