S. G. Glendinning

A review of the ablative stabilization of the Rayleigh–Taylor instability in regimes relevant to inertial confinement fusion

It has been recognized for many years that the most significant limitation of inertial confinement fusion (ICF) is the Rayleigh–Taylor (RT) instability. It limits the distance an ablatively driven shell can be moved to several times its initial thickness. Fortunately material flow through the unstable region at velocity vA reduces the growth rate to √kg/1+kL−βkvA with β from 2–3. In recent years experiments using both x‐ray drive and smoothed laser drive to accelerate foils have confirmed the community’s understanding of the ablative RT instability in planar geometry. The growth of small initial modulations on the foils is measured for growth factors up to 60 for direct drive and 80 for indirect drive. For x‐ray drive large stabilization is evident. After some growth, the instability enters the nonlinear phase when mode coupling and saturation are also seen and compare well with modeling. Normalized growth rates for direct drive are measured to be higher, but strategies for reduction by raising the isentr...

X-ray backlighting for the National Ignition Facility (invited)

X-ray backlighting is a powerful tool for diagnosing a large variety of high-energy-density phenomena. Traditional area backlighting techniques used at Nova and Omega cannot be extended efficiently to NIF-scale. New, more efficient backlighting sources and techniques are required and have begun to show promising results. These include a backlit-pinhole point projection technique, pinhole and slit arrays, distributed polychromatic sources, and picket fence backlighters. In parallel, there have been developments in improving the data SNR and hence quality by switching from film to CCD-based recording media and by removing the fixed-pattern noise of MCP-based cameras.

Supernova hydrodynamics experiments on the Nova laser

In studying complex astrophysical phenomena such as supernovae, one does not have the luxury of setting up clean, well-controlled experiments in the universe to test the physics of current models and theories. Consequently, creating a surrogate environment to serve as an experimental astrophysics testbed would be highly beneficial. The existence of highly sophisticated, modern research lasers, developed largely as a result of the world-wide effort in inertial confinement fusion, opens a new potential for creating just such an experimental testbed utilizing well-controlled, well-diagnosed laser-produced plasmas. Two areas of physics critical to an understanding of supernovae are discussed that are amenable to supporting research on large lasers: (1) compressible nonlinear hydrodynamic mixing and (2) radiative shock hydrodynamics.

High-Energy X-ray Microscopy Techniques for Laser-Fusion Plasma Research at the National Ignition Facility.

Multi-kilo-electron-volt x-ray microscopy will be an important laser-produced plasma diagnostic at future megajoule facilities such as the National Ignition Facility (NIF). However, laser energies and plasma characteristics imply that x-ray microscopy will be more challenging at NIF than at existing facilities. We use analytical estimates and numerical ray tracing to investigate several instrumentation options in detail, and we conclude that near-normal-incidence single spherical or toroidal crystals may offer the best general solution for high-energy x-ray microscopy at NIF and similar large facilities. Apertured Kirkpatrick-Baez microscopes using multilayer mirrors may also be good options, particularly for applications requiring one-dimensional imaging over narrow fields of view.

Observation of collapsing radiative shocks in laboratory experiments

This article reports the observation of the dense, collapsed layer produced by a radiative shock in a laboratory experiment. The experiment uses laser irradiation to accelerate a thin layer of solid-density material to above 100km∕s, the first to probe such high velocities in a radiative shock. The layer in turn drives a shock wave through a cylindrical volume of Xe gas (at ∼6mg∕cm3). Radiation from the shocked Xe removes enough energy that the shocked layer increases in density and collapses spatially. This type of system is relevant to a number of astrophysical contexts, providing the potential to observe phenomena of interest to astrophysics and to test astrophysical computer codes.

Single-mode, Rayleigh-Taylor growth-rate measurements on the OMEGA laser system

The results from a series of single-mode, Rayleigh–Taylor (RT) instability growth experiments performed on the OMEGA laser system [T. R. Boehly et al., Opt. Commun. 133, 495 (1997)] using planar targets are reported. Planar targets with imposed mass perturbations were accelerated using five or six 351 nm laser beams overlapped with total intensities up to 2.5×1014 W/cm2. Experiments were performed with both 3 ns ramp and 3 ns flat-topped temporal pulse shapes. The use of distributed phase plates and smoothing by spectral dispersion resulted in a laser-irradiation nonuniformity of 4%–7% over a 600 μm diam region defined by the 90% intensity contour. The temporal growth of the modulation in optical depth was measured using throughfoil radiography and was detected with an x-ray framing camera for CH targets. Two-dimensional (2-D) hydrodynamic simulations (ORCHID) [R. L. McCrory and C. P. Verdon, in Inertial Confinement Fusion (Editrice Compositori, Bologna, 1989), pp. 83–124] of the growth of 20, 31, and 60 ...

Accessing ultrahigh-pressure, quasi-isentropic states of matter

A new approach to the study of material strength of metals at extreme pressures has been developed on the Omega laser, using a ramped plasma piston drive. The laser drives a shock through a solid plastic reservoir that unloads at the rear free surface, expands across a vacuum gap, and stagnates on the metal sample under study. This produces a gently increasing ram pressure, compressing the sample nearly isentropically. The peak pressure on the sample, inferred from interferometric measurements of velocity, can be varied by adjusting the laser energy and pulse length, gap size, and reservoir density, and obeys a simple scaling relation [J. Edwards et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 075002 (2004)]. In an important application, using in-flight x-ray radiography, the material strength of solid-state samples at high pressure can be inferred by measuring the reductions in the growth rates (stabilization) of Rayleigh–Taylor unstable interfaces. This paper reports the first attempt to use this new laser-driven, quasi-i...

Two-dimensional versus Three-dimensional Supernova Hydrodynamic Instability Growth

Numerical simulations using the SN hydrodynamics code PROMETHEUS are carried out to study the difference between growth of two-dimensional versus three-dimensional single-mode perturbations at the He-H and O-He interfaces of SN 1987A. We find that in the rest frame of an unperturbed one-dimensional interface, a three-dimensional single-mode perturbation grows ≈30%-35% faster than a two-dimensional single-mode perturbation, when the wavelengths are chosen to give the same linear stage growth in the planar limit. In simulations where we impose single-mode density perturbations in the O layer of the initial model and random velocity perturbations in the postshock fluid near the He-H interface, we find that both axisymmetric O spikes and three-dimensional O spikes penetrate significantly further than two-dimensional O spikes. The difference between two dimensions and three dimensions predicted by our calculations is not enough to account for the difference between observed 56Co velocities in SN 1987A and the results of previous two-dimensional simulations of SN 1987A, but our results suggest that the real three-dimensional hydrodynamics are noticeably different than the two-dimensional simulations predict.

Large growth, planar Rayleigh–Taylor experiments on Nova

A set of indirect‐drive experiments to study large growth Rayleigh–Taylor instability using shaped laser pulses at the Nova laser facility has been conducted. Planar foils of fluorosilicone were accelerated by x‐ray ablation. The foil trajectory was measured using edge‐on radiography. In separate experiments using face‐on radiography, contrast in optical depth was measured as a function of time, from which the evolution of 50 μm wavelength initially sinusoidal surface perturbations was deduced. Holding other parameters fixed, the amplitude of the initial perturbation was varied by up to a factor of 30 in separate shots. The foils with the smallest initial perturbation exhibited growth factors of 75 in contrast. Foils with large initial amplitude perturbation gave growth factors of 6 or less, and displayed the ‘‘bubble‐and‐spike’’ shape characteristic of the nonlinear Rayleigh–Taylor instability. Comparisons of two‐dimensional computer simulations with both the measured foil trajectory and the perturbation growth show good agreement, provided that a suitable opacity model is chosen. In the linear regime the observed growth rates are 60%–75% of classical, the reduction attributed primarily to ablative stabilization. The observed onset of harmonic generation, signaling the transition into the nonlinear regime, is well predicted by third‐order theory.

Supernova-relevant Hydrodynamic Instability Experiments on the Nova Laser

Supernova 1987A focused attention on the critical role of hydrodynamic instabilities in the evolution of supernovae. To test the modeling of these instabilities, we are developing laboratory experiments of hydrodynamic mixing under conditions relevant to supernovae. The target consists of a two-layer planar package composed of 85 μm Cu backed by 500 μm CH2, having a single-mode sinusoidal perturbation at the interface, with λ = 200 μm and η0 = 20 μm. The Nova Laser is used to generate a 10-15 Mbar [(10-15) × 1012 dyne cm2] shock at the interface, which triggers perturbation growth as a result of the Richtmyer-Meshkov instability, followed by the Rayleigh-Taylor instability as the interface decelerates. This resembles the hydrodynamics of the He-H interface of a Type II supernova at intermediate times, up to a few times 103 s. The experiment is modeled using the hydrodynamics codes HYADES and CALE and the supernova code PROMETHEUS. Results of the experiments and simulations are presented.