Liner experiment on verification of Rayleigh-Taylor instability magnetic stabilization effect (joint LANL/VNIIEF experiment Pegasus-2)

A liner implosion experiment was conducted on facility Pegasus-2, in which two perturbation type growth was compared. On one half (through height) of the cylindrical liner sinusoidal azimuthally symmetric perturbations were produced. On the other liner half the perturbations were of the same wavelength and the same amplitude, but the angle between the wave vector and the cylinder axis was 45/spl deg/ (screw perturbations). The experimental radiographs show that there is essentially no screw perturbation growth, while the azimuthally symmetric perturbations grow many-fold. This result agrees with the theoretical predictions.

I. INTRODUCTION

Ref. [1] theoretically demonstrates that the perturbation growth can be decelerated or even depressed completely during the Rayleigh - Taylor instability in liner magnetic acceleration. The necessary conditions for this are infmitesimal skin thickness as compared to the perturbation wavelength (ideal conductivity) and a small enough angle between the direction of magnetic field and perturbation wave vector . Completely suppressed is the instability for short-wave perturbations of the wavelength shorter than the critical. According to the theory [1].

$$\lambda_{kp}=4\pi\Delta \cos^{2}\theta,\eqno{\hbox{(1)}}$$ where is the liner thickness, is the angle between and . Note that ref. [1] considers the case of the magnetic field of time-invariable direction. As far as we know, no straightforward experimental validation of the theory has been made thus far.