Hydrodynamic instability growth of three-dimensional modulations in radiation-driven implosions with “low-foot” and “high-foot” drives at the National Ignition Facility

Abstract

Hydrodynamic instability growth has been studied using three-dimensional (3-D) broadband modulations by comparing “high-foot” and “low-foot” spherical plastic (CH) capsule implosions at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) [E. M. Campbell et al., AIP Conf. Proc. 429, 3 (1998)]. The initial perturbations included capsule outer-surface roughness and capsule-mounting membranes (“tents”) that were similar to those used in a majority of implosions on NIF. The tents with thicknesses of 31-nm, 46-nm, and 109-nm were used in the experiments. The outer-surface roughness in the “low-foot” experiment was similar to the standard specification, while it was increased by ∼4 times in the “high-foot” experiment to compensate for the reduced growth. The ablation-front instability growth was measured using a Hydrodynamic Growth Radiography platform at a convergence ratio of ∼3. The dominant capsule perturbations, generated by the tent mountings, had measured perturbation amplitudes comparable to the capsule thickness with the “low-foot” drive. These tent perturbations were reduced by ∼3 to 10 times in implosions with the “high-foot” drive. Unexpectedly, the measured perturbations with initially thinner tents were either larger or similar to the measured perturbations with thicker tents for both “high-foot” and “low-foot” drives. While the measured instability growth of 3-D broadband perturbations was also significantly reduced by ∼5 to 10 times with the “high-foot” drive, compared to the “low-foot” drive, the growth mitigation was stronger than expected based on previous “growth-factor” results measured with two-dimensional modulations [D. T. Casey et al., Phys. Rev. E 90, 011102 (2014)]. One of the hypotheses to explain the results is based on the 3-D modulations of the oxygen content in the bulk of the capsule having a stronger effect on the overall growth of capsule perturbations than the outer-surface capsule roughness.