Engineering stability – the role of pulsed power in hydrodynamic instability research

Magnetohydrodynamic instabilities dominate plasma and fluid dynamics over a large range of scales. Notable examples include the magneto-Rayleigh-Taylor (MRT), Richtmyer-Meshkov (RM), Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH), or electrothermal instability (ET). Study of these phenomena in dense plasmas is usually performed using relatively large facilities (multi-MA pulsed power, multi-kJ lasers) with slow turn-around time (few shots per day) and lack of advanced X-ray diagnostics.

High-current pulsed power systems are ideally suited to overcome this problem by offering a very compact (1m3) and complementary capability that can deliver > kJ of electrical energy into ~ cm scale samples over ~ 100 ns at advanced light sources as a non-permanent installation.

In this talk, I will present our recent results using pulsed power to perform RM stabilization experiments at the European Synchrotron in France.