Design and implementation plan for indirect-drive highly nonlinear ablative Rayleigh-Taylor instability experiments on the National Ignition Facility

In the context of National Ignition Facility Basic Science program we propose to study on the NIF ablative Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability in transition from weakly nonlinear to highly nonlinear regimes. Based on the analogy between flame front and ablation front, highly nonlinear RT instability measurements at the ablation front can provide important insights into the initial deflagration stage of thermonuclear supernovae of type la. NIF provides a unique platform to study the rich physics of nonlinear and turbulent mixing flows in High Energy Density plasmas because it can accelerate targets over much larger distances and longer time periods than previously achieved on the NOVA and OMEGA lasers. In one shot, growth of RT modulations can be measured from the weakly nonlinear stage near nonlinear saturation levels to the highly nonlinear bubble-competition, bubble-merger regimes and perhaps into a turbulent-like regime. The role of ablation on highly-nonlinear RI instability evolution will be comprehensively studied by varying ablation velocity using indirect and direct-drive platforms. We present a detailed hydrocode design of the indirect-drive platform and discuss the implementation plan for these experiments which only use NIF diagnostics already qualified. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.