Rayleigh–Taylor mixing may account for the position anomaly in NIF microdot spectroscopy experiments

Abstract

The “microdot spectroscopy” experiment [Barrios et al., “Electron temperature measurements inside the ablating plasma of gas-filled Hohlraums at the National Ignition Facility,” Phys. Plasmas 23, 056307 (2016); Barrios et al., “Developing an experimental basis for understanding transport in NIF Hohlraum plasmas,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 095002 (2018).] allows for a simultaneous measurement of the electron temperature (Te) and position of a patch of Mn and Co inside a Hohlraum, as described by Barrios et al. [“Electron temperature measurements inside the ablating plasma of gas-filled Hohlraums at the National Ignition Facility,” Phys. Plasmas 23, 056307 (2016).] HYDRA simulations systematically predicted a dot location further away from its starting location than observed in the experiment. In the article, integrated radiation hydrodynamics simulations with TROLL have led to the same trend as HYDRA. A new ad hoc treatment of laser absorption, through what we have called absorption multipliers, has been implemented in TROLL in order to mimic the effect of absorption mechanisms other than inverse-bremsstrahlung. It led to the instrumental conclusion that whatever physical phenomenon was responsible for the position anomaly must have occurred in the early stage. More precise simulations of the dot region, from early to late time, show that the position discrepancy can be explained by a Rayleigh–Taylor mixing of the dot into the ablator as it expands in the Hohlraum. This mixing tends to shift the simulated dot closer to the location measured in the experiment. However, the mixing also changes the interpretation of the electron temperature from the spectral line ratios.