Compressible Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities in supernova remnants

Partial modeling of the hydrodynamic evolution of the supernovae is one of the prominent applications of laboratory astrophysics. In particular the role of Rayleigh-Taylor instability (RTI) in supernova evolution needs to be explained. In this paper we analyze the compressibility effects on the RTI in the linear regime. We compare the compressible isothermal and stratified incompressible RTI growth rates and analyze the vorticity generation at the interface. We show that for several configurations the effect of compressibility can be significant in supernovae remnants. (C) American Institute of Physics.