How to Ride a Laser Beam

Today I gave a lunch talk at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics on some work I’ve been doing for the Breakthrough Starshot project. In particular, I’ve been trying to figure out how to make sure the lightsail stays on the laser beam as it is accelerated. In the video below, I talk about some analysis on different beam and sail configurations and thier stability properties. You can also check out a draft of the paper on ArXiv for all of the gory mathematical details.