Code comparison of cylindrical implosion experiments for deceleration phase Rayleigh-Taylor

The Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) hydrodynamic instability occurs when a lower density fluid pushes on a higher density fluid. This occurs in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) implosions at each of the capsule interfaces during the initial acceleration and the deceleration as it stagnates. The RT instabilities mix capsule material into the fusion fuel degrading the DT reactivity and ultimately play a key role in limiting target performance. Significant effort has recently been focused on understanding deceleration phase RT using codes such as xRAGE¹ to design experiments for OMEGA and NIF. Here we present the design of a cylindrical implosion system using the code FLASH² for comparison to xRAGE results. We also use FLASH to explore the influence of magnetic fields on RT growth in the implosions.

¹ Gittings, Michael, et al. "The RAGE radiation-hydrodynamic code." Computational Science & Discovery 1.1 (2008): 015005.

² Fryxell, Bruce, et al. "FLASH: An adaptive mesh hydrodynamics code for modeling astrophysical thermonuclear flashes." The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series 131.1 (2000): 273.