Supernova-relevant hydrodynamic instability experiment on the Nova laser

Supernova 1987A focused attention on the critical role of hydrodynamic instabilities in the evolution of supernovae. On quite a separate front, the detrimental effect of hydrodynamic instabilities in Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) has long been known. Tools from both areas are being tested on a common project. At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the Nova Laser is being used in scaled laboratory experiments of hydrodynamic mixing under supernova-relevant conditions. Numerical simulations of the experiments are being done, using hydrodynamics codes at the Laboratory, and astrophysical codes successfully used to model the hydrodynamics of supernovae. A two-layer package composed of Cu and CH2 with a single mode sinusoidal 1D perturbation at the interface, shocked by indirect laser drive from the Cu side of the package, produced significant Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) growth in the nonlinear regime. The scale and gross structure of the growth was successfully modeled, by mapping an early-time simulation done with 1D HYADES, a radiation transport code, into 2D CALE, a LLNL hydrodynamics code. The HYADES result was also mapped in 2D into the supernova code PROMETHEUS, which was also able to reproduce the scale and gross structure of the growth.