Laser-Produced Magnetic-Rayleigh-Taylor Unstable Plasma Slabs in a 20 T Magnetic Field

Abstract

Magnetized laser-produced plasmas are central to many novel laboratory astrophysics and inertial confinement fusion studies, as well as in industrial applications. Here we provide the first complete description of the three-dimensional dynamics of a laser-driven plasma plume expanding in a 20 T transverse magnetic field. The plasma is collimated by the magnetic field into a slender, rapidly elongating slab, whose plasma-vacuum interface is unstable to the growth of the "classical," fluidlike magnetized Rayleigh-Taylor instability.