Double cylinder experiments on OMEGA for study of Rayleigh-Taylor instability growth on a classically unstable interface

The double cylinder experimental platform is designed as an analogue to the double shell inertial confinement fusion capsule in order to study hydrodynamic instability growth on the inner shell, the outer surface of which is classically Rayleigh-Taylor unstable during the acceleration phase. We present results from recent experiments at the OMEGA laser facility. These experiments were designed as a proof-of-principle for the platform, using the same cylinder exterior dimensions and direct-drive beam configuration as previous single cylinder experiments. In these experiments, three sets of targets were fielded: no machined perturbations (smooth), a sinusoidal mode-10 perturbation on the inner cylinder, and a mode-20 perturbation on the inner cylinder. The primary diagnostic was a gated x-ray framing camera which imaged the backlit inner cylinder on-axis for 16 frames over a time window of 1 ns for each shot. A second side-lit radiograph captured 1 image per shot, diagnosing axial uniformity. We investigate the energy transfer efficiency between outer and inner cylinders, and we compare the perturbation growth between mode-10 and mode-20. We compare marker trajectories and measured Rayleigh-Taylor spike growth with radiation-hydrodynamics simulations and linear theory.