Design of Cylindrical Implosion Experiments to Demonstrate Scale-Invariant Rayleigh-Taylor Instability Growth

• Published in: High energy density physics Vol. 36; no. C; p. 100831
• Main Authors: Sauppe, J.P., Palaniyappan, S., Kline, J.L., Flippo, K.A., Landen, O.L., Shvarts, D., Batha, S.H., Bradley, P.A., Loomis, E.N., Tobias, B.J., Vazirani, N.N., Kawaguchi, C.F., Kot, L., Schmidt, D.W., Day, T.H., Zylstra, A.B., Malka, E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier B.V 01.08.2020; Elsevier
• Subjects: PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
• ISSN: 1574-1818; 1878-0563
• DOI: 10.1016/j.hedp.2020.100831

Radiation-hydrodynamics simulations are used to design laser-driven cylindrical implosion experiments to directly measure hydrodynamic instability growth in convergent geometry. Designs for two different size targets, varying in radial dimension by a factor of three, are presented. A set of beam pointings and powers are identified for each scale design that result in a nearly axially uniform implosion of an embedded marker layer. The implosion trajectories are shown to be scale-invariant between designs, with nearly identical scaled acceleration profiles. Linear theory and radiation-hydrodynamics simulations predict that Rayleigh-Taylor instability growth of an azimuthal perturbation, machined on the inner surface of the embedded marker, is also scale-invariant between designs.