Convergent Rayleigh-Taylor experiments on the nova laser

Experiments have been done on the Nova laser to investigate the effects of convergence on Rayleigh-Taylor growth. We ablatively accelerated planar CH(Br) foils or hemispherical CH(Ge) capsules with identical initial perturbations. Experimental results showed the decrease of the effective wavelength of the perturbation and the early onset of nonlinearity in the converging case compared to the planar case. Numerical simulations using the 2D Lagrangian code FC12 are in good agreement with the experimental results.