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Updated: Apr 27, 2026

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
Published on: March 3, 2017
Passive Freeze-Out of the Richtmyer-Meshkov Instability
J Strucka1,2, D M Sterbentz3, B Lukic4
1Imperial College London, Plasma Physics Group, London SW7 2BW, United Kingdom.
None:
The Richtmyer-Meshkov instability (RMI) poses a major challenge in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) due to its role in mixing and performance degradation. We report the first experimental observation of passive freeze-out of RMI in a low-pressure surrogate regime, an instability stagnation effect induced without modifying the driving pressure pulse or the target surface geometry. Using additively manufactured subsurface voids in a sinusoidal target, we convert a single shock into a sequence of weaker shocks that suppress instability growth upstream of the surface by over 70%. High-speed x-ray imaging and hydrodynamic simulations suggest that this suppression arises primarily from temporal shaping, with lesser contributions from spatial curvature and shock weakening. Our results demonstrate a driver-independent pathway for controlling shock-driven hydrodynamic instabilities relevant to ICF and other high energy density systems.
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