page_title: Optical lift
section_title: Potential uses
hierarchical_section_title: Optical lift / Potential uses
caption_attribution_description: English: Arrays of lightfoils, called flying carpets, may be integrated onto current solar sails to provide both passive and active options of steering control with radiation pressure that does not require a change in the sail attitude. This eliminates the need for mechanical steering controls.
context_page_description: 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.
context_section_description: The 2010 discovery of stable optical lift is considered by some physicists to be "most surprising". 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, 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.
  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 incoherent light.
caption: Using optical lift to steer solar sails
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