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Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 085002 (2009) [4 pages]

Stability of a Shock-Decelerated Ablation Front

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Y. Aglitskiy1, M. Karasik2, A. L. Velikovich2, V. Serlin2, J. L. Weaver2, A. J. Schmitt2, S. P. Obenschain2, N. Metzler3, S. T. Zalesak4, J. H. Gardner4, J. Oh5, and E. C. Harding6
1Science Applications International Corporation, McLean, Virginia 22150, USA
2Plasma Physics Division, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C. 20375, USA
3Artep Inc., Colombia, Maryland 20145, USA and Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva, Israel
4Berkeley Research Associates, Beltsville, Maryland 20705, USA
5Research Support Instruments, Lanham, Maryland 20706, USA
6University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, USA

Received 23 March 2009; published 17 August 2009

Experimental study of a shock-decelerated ablation front is reported. A planar solid plastic target is accelerated by a laser across a vacuum gap and collides with a lower-density plastic foam layer. While the target is accelerated, a fast Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) growth of the seeded single-mode perturbation at the ablation front is observed. After the collision, the velocity of the ablation front is seen to remain constant. The reshock quenches the RT growth but does not trigger any Richtmyer-Meshkov growth at the ablation front, which is shown to be consistent with both theory and simulations.

© 2009 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.085002
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.085002
PACS:
52.57.Fg, 47.20.Ma, 52.35.Tc, 52.70.La
 
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