Mitigation of deceleration-phase Rayleigh–Taylor instability growth in inertial confinement fusion implosions

Abstract

Rayleigh–Taylor growth during shell deceleration is one of the main limiting factors for target performance in inertial confinement fusion implosions. Using analytical scaling laws and hydrodynamic simulations, we show that such amplification can be mitigated by reducing the initial mass density in the central target region. The perturbation growth reduction is caused by a smaller hot-spot convergence ratio during deceleration, increased density scale length, and enhanced ablation stabilization. The required central density reduction can be achieved using the dynamic shell formation concept.