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Updated: Sep 5, 2025
06:42
Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
Published on: March 3, 2017
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Rayleigh-Taylor instability in strongly coupled plasma
Rauoof Wani1, Ajaz Mir1, Farida Batool1
1Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Jammu, Jammu, 181221, India.
Scientific Reports
|July 7, 2022
Summary
Rayleigh-Taylor instability (RTI) in strongly coupled plasmas is suppressed by increased Coulomb coupling, with caging effects hindering growth. Increased shielding and Atwood number enhance RTI, impacting inertial confinement fusion energy coupling.
Area of Science:
- Plasma Physics
- Computational Physics
- Fluid Dynamics
Background:
- Rayleigh-Taylor instability (RTI) drives energy mixing in stratified fluids under gravity.
- Understanding RTI in strongly coupled plasmas is crucial for applications like inertial confinement fusion.
- Increasing Coulomb coupling (potential energy comparable to thermal energy) alters plasma behavior.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate RTI evolution in strongly coupled plasmas.
- Determine the effect of coupling strength on RTI growth rates.
- Explore the influence of shielding and density gradients on RTI.
Main Methods:
- Two-dimensional molecular dynamics simulations.
- Analysis of RTI growth rates across different coupling strengths.
- Calculation of dispersion relations.
Main Results:
- RTI growth rate decreases with increasing Coulomb coupling strength.
- Caging effect identified as a mechanism for growth suppression.
- Increased shielding and Atwood number enhance RTI growth.
- Dispersion relation shows slight growth enhancement compared to hydrodynamic viscous fluid.
Conclusions:
- Strongly coupled plasmas exhibit suppressed RTI due to increased correlation.
- RTI dynamics in plasmas differ from classical fluid models.
- Findings are relevant to energy coupling mechanisms in inertial confinement fusion.
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