Strong stabilization of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability by material strength at megabar pressures

Experimental results showing significant reductions from classical in the Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability growth rate due to high pressure effective lattice viscosity in metal foils are presented. Stabilization of RT instability (RTI) by ablation and density gradients has been studied for decades. The regime of stabilized RTI due to material strength at high pressure is new. On the Omega Laser in the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, University of Rochester, target samples of polycrystalline vanadium are compressed and accelerated quasi-isentropically at similar to 1 Mbar pressures, while maintaining the samples in the solid-state. Provided strong shocks are avoided, the higher the applied peak pressure, the higher the predicted foil strength, and hence, the higher the degree of strength stabilization of RTI. Several experiments were conducted where the amount of RT growth is measured by face-on radiography. The vanadium samples are probed by a laser driven He-alpha x-ray backlighter which produced 5.2 keV radiation. Comparison of the results with constitutive models for solid state strength under these conditions show that the measured RT growth is substantially lower than predictions using existing models that work well at low pressures and long time scales. High pressure, high strain rate data can be explained by the enhanced strength due to a phonon drag mechanism, creating a high effective lattice viscosity. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3363170]