| In direct-drive inertial confinement fusion (ICF), a spherical target is imploded by overlapping laser beams to compress and heat DT fuel to conditions necessary for efficient thermonuclear burn. The Rayleigh-Taylor instability (RTI) is of primary concern in ICF, as it can cause initial areal-density (rhoR) perturbations to grow, leading to shell degradation and quenching of the hot spot necessary to achieve ignition of thermonuclear fusion. This work addresses two RTI concerns relevant to achieving ignition in ICF; measurement of RTI growth in cryogenic D2 targets and the effect of ablators of different atomic numbers (Z) on RTI growth rates using plastic (CH) and glass (SiO 2) targets. In these experiments, the temporal evolution of 2-D areal density (rhoR) modulations is measured using face-on X-ray radiography. Measured RT growth rates in D2 showed reasonable agreement with 2-D hydrodynamic simulations indicating reduced growth in D2 compared to CH, as predicted by theory. This result is crucial to ignition target designs using cryogenic DT ablators. The effect of thin ablators with different Z's on CH and SiO2 targets at varying drive intensities showed inconsistencies between the measured modulation growth and the 2-D hydrodynamic simulations at peak intensities of 1015 W/cm2 for targets with CH ablators due to hot electron preheat. Understanding preheat for ablators of different Z's is critical to achieving ignition in ICF; this work explores the impact of hot electron generation on the RTI at conditions relevant to ignition. |
