Rayleigh–Taylor instability simulations with CRASH

Abstract

CRASH is a code package developed for the predictive study of radiative shocks. It is based on the BATSRUS MHD code used extensively for space-weather research. We desire to extend the applications of this code to the study of hydrodynamically unstable systems. We report here the results of Rayleigh–Taylor instability (RTI) simulations with CRASH, as a necessary step toward the study of such systems. Our goal, motivated by the previous comparison of simulations and experiment, is to be able to simulate the magnetic RTI with self-generated magnetic fields produced by the Biermann Battery effect. Here we show results for hydrodynamic RTI, comparing the effects of different solvers and numerical parameters. We find that the early-time behavior converges to the analytical result of the linear theory. We observe that the late-time morphology is sensitive to the numerical scheme and limiter beta. At low-resolution limit, the growth of RTI is highly dependent on the setup and resolution, which we attribute to the large numerical viscosity at low resolution.