Nonlinear excitation of the ablative Rayleigh-Taylor instability for all wave numbers

Small-scale perturbations in the ablative Rayleigh-Taylor instability (ARTI) are often neglected because they are linearly stable when their wavelength is shorter than a linear cutoff. Using two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) numerical simulations, it is shown that linearly stable modes of any wavelength can be destabilized. This instability regime requires finite amplitude initial perturbations and linearly stable ARTI modes to be more easily destabilized in 3D than in 2D. It is shown that for conditions found in laser fusion targets, short wavelength ARTI modes are more efficient at driving mixing of ablated material throughout the target since the nonlinear bubble density increases with the wave number and small-scale bubbles carry a larger mass flux of mixed material.