Growth of pellet imperfections and laser imprint in direct drive inertial confinement fusion targets

Abstract

Simple hydrodynamic models for describing the Richtmyer–Meshkov (RM) growth and the Rayleigh–Taylor (RT) instability are tested by simulation. The RM sharp boundary model predictions are compared with numerical simulations of targets with surface perturbations or stationary intensity perturbations. Agreement is found in the overall trends, but the specific behavior can be significantly different. RM growth of imprint from optically smoothed lasers is also simulated and quantified. The results are used to calculate surface perturbations, growth factors, and laser imprint efficiencies. These in turn are used with standard RT growth formulas to predict perturbation growth in multimode simulations of compression and acceleration of planar and spherical targets. The largest differences between prediction and theory occur during ramp-up of the laser intensity, where RT formulas predict more growth than seen in the simulations.