Overview
- Researchers at Texas A&M built micron-scale devices called metajets and used laser light to lift and steer them in three dimensions without contact.
- Each metajet is a patterned metasurface that redirects incoming photons, and the change in light momentum produces a reaction force the authors call metaphotonic forces.
- The team published a physics framework in the journal Newton that links metasurface-induced light deflection to force generation and explains how vertical and lateral forces arise.
- The researchers say force in this system depends mostly on optical power rather than object size, placing steering control in the material and suggesting a path to larger light-driven systems if engineering barriers fall.
- Experiments ran in fluid to offset gravity, and the team is seeking funding for microgravity tests as major hurdles remain, including continuous high-power lasers, heat-tolerant materials, long-distance beam pointing, and navigation for very fast probes; related work on solar sails and laser pushes by ESA, Caltech, and RIT frames a broader, still-early field.