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Just as the wind boosts a sail, the pressure of light may accelerate a
\nreflecting object. A few years after the invention of the laser, the idea of a
\nrocket boosted by an Earth-based laser system was proposed for interstellar
\ntravel. With the recent advent of ultrapowerful laser systems the “Light Sail”
\nconcept, scaled down to sub-millimeter lengths and times of one millionth of
\nmillionth of a second, may yield acceleration values similar to those near the
\nsurface of a Black Hole and provide compact sources of high-energy ions for
\napplications in technology and medicine.
\nUsing the VULCAN Petawatt (one thousand of billions of Watt power) laser at
\nRutherford Appleton Laboratory (UK) to irradiate sub-micrometric thin foils,
\na collaboration leaded by a group from The Queen’s University of Belfast and
\nincluding theoretical support from a CNR\/INO scientist (A. Macchi) has given
\nfor the first time evidence of the typical scaling of the energy per
\nnucleon versus the laser and target parameters that is typical of the Light
\nSail model. The scaling with the laser energy is the fastest obtained so far
\nin experiments on laser-driven acceleration of ions, and together with the
\nlarge number of accelerated ions it makes this approach quite promising for
\nfuture developments.<\/p>\n