Ablative Rayleigh-Taylor instability in the limit of an infinitely large density ratio / Instabilité de Rayleigh-Taylor d'un front d'ablation dans la limite d'un rapport de densité infini

Paul Clavin (1) , Christophe Almarcha (1)

1 IRPHE - Institut de Recherche sur les Phénomènes Hors Equilibre

The instability of ablation fronts strongly accelerated toward the dense medium under the conditions of inertial confinement fusion (ICF) is addressed in the limit of an infinitely large density ratio. The analysis serves to demonstrate that the flow is irrotational to first order, reducing the nonlinear analysis to solve a two-potential flows problem. Vorticity appears at the following orders in the perturbation analysis. This result simplifies greatly the analysis. The possibility for using boundary integral methods opens new perspectives in the nonlinear theory of the ablative RT instability in ICF. A few examples are given at the end of the Note

Mots clés: Fluid mechanics; Rayleigh–Taylor instability; Ablation fronts; Inertial confinement fusion

Domaines: Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]; Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]; Physique des plasmas [physics.plasm-ph]

Paul Clavin, Christophe Almarcha. Ablative Rayleigh-Taylor instability in the limit of an infinitely large density ratio / Instabilité de Rayleigh-Taylor d'un front d'ablation dans la limite d'un rapport de densité infini. Comptes Rendus Mécanique, 2005, 333, n° 5, pp.379-388. ⟨10.1016/j.crme.2005.03.005⟩. ⟨hal-00015483⟩