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Updated: May 21, 2026

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
Published on: March 3, 2017
Magnetic field generation in Rayleigh-Taylor unstable inertial confinement fusion plasmas
Bhuvana Srinivasan1, Guy Dimonte, Xian-Zhu Tang
1Los Alamos National Laboratory, P. O. Box 1663, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA.
Abstract:
Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities (RTI) in inertial confinement fusion implosions are expected to generate magnetic fields. A Hall-MHD model is used to study the field generation by 2D single-mode and multimode RTI in a stratified two-fluid plasma. Self-generated magnetic fields are predicted and these fields grow as the RTI progresses via the ∇n(e)×∇T(e) term in the generalized Ohm's law. Scaling studies are performed to determine the growth of the self-generated magnetic field as a function of density, acceleration, Atwood number, and perturbation wavelength.
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