Keep the beam. Deliver the power.
A moving receiver. A constrained controller. Every watt accounted for.
Peak plate temperature
25°C → 85°C trip24 × 24 finite-volume plate
Cooling + lateral diffusion
Not a cell-level stress model
Show the calculation, not a claim.
The engine runs in your browser at a fixed 2 ms control step. Optical capture and heat update every 10 ms. A seeded noise source makes resets reproducible.
h(x) = atan(x/L); H = L/(L²+x²)Nonlinear bearing observation · two independent [position, velocity] EKFsw² = w₀² + (M²λL / πw₀)²Gaussian-equivalent beam · waist at transmitter · λ = 1064 nmP(x,y) = 2P₀ηₒe^(−γL) / (πw²) · e^(−2r²/w²)Spatial integration over a 40 cm circular receiverCᵢ dTᵢ/dt = Qᵢ − Gᵢ(Tᵢ−25) + diffusionQᵢ = Pᵢ(0.90 − ηPV(Tᵢ)); ηPV falls 0.2% relative per kelvinAssumptions you can challenge.
What is modeled
Sinusoidal motion in two transverse axes at fixed axial distance; noisy angular observations; independent constant-velocity EKFs; delayed commands; velocity- and acceleration-limited gimbal; bandwidth- and stroke-limited vibration compensation; Gaussian beam propagation; uniform Beer–Lambert extinction; spatial receiver capture; temperature-dependent PV conversion; transient plate heating and a latched 85°C shutdown.
Gimbal defaults: 30°/s maximum, 100°/s² acceleration. FSM: 60 Hz response, ±200 µrad stroke, 1 µrad sensor noise. Target bearing sensor: 8 µrad standard deviation at 100 Hz. Vibration: 35 Hz + 83 Hz tones. These are assumptions, not measured specifications.
Power and thermal assumptions
3.5 kW optical source; 90% transmitter efficiency; 45% laser wall-plug efficiency; 45% nominal PV efficiency; 95% DC conditioning; 2 kW bus limit. Total plate heat capacity 1,800 J/K, thermal diffusivity 2×10⁻⁵ m²/s, cooling conductance 200 W/K. Fixed 25°C ambient, 90% optical absorptance. Electronics losses and dumped bus power are outside the plate model.
What this does not establish
No atmospheric turbulence, scintillation, wavefront propagation, thermal blooming, structural thermoelastic distortion, detailed gimbal inertia, orbital dynamics, solar-array electrical string mismatch or real sensor/actuator hardware. No learned AI model. An EKF is a deterministic estimator. The FSM models local vibration feedback, not perfect knowledge of the target.
Extinction γ is directly specified in km⁻¹; haze presets do not claim a calibrated visibility-to-extinction relationship. Plate temperatures and efficiencies require experimental calibration. The heatmap does not establish safe cell operation.
Receiver compatibility
A dedicated InGaAs-family converter tuned to 1064 nm is assumed. This is not a claim about standard GaAs cells or existing spacecraft multijunction arrays. Small-device efficiency results do not demonstrate a kilowatt receiver assembly.
1064 nm InGaAs laser converters · Applied Physics Letters ↗
Device-scale 1070 nm converters · Photonics ↗
Gaussian beam propagation · Edmund Optics ↗