Experimental comparison of classical versus ablative Rayleigh-Taylor instability

The evolution of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability in a compressible medium has been investigated both at an accelerating embedded interface and at the ablation front in experiments on the Nova laser. Planar targets of brominated plastic for the ablation front and brominated plastic backed by a titanium payload for the embedded interface were ablatively accelerated by the x-ray drive generated in a gold Hohlraum. When the perturbation is at the ablation front, short wavelength modes are stabilized, whereas at the embedded interface the shortest wavelengths grow the mast.