2020 Physics/Theoretical Colloquium
 
Thursday, February 27th , 2020
3:45 – 4:45 p.m.
Rosen Auditorium (TA-53, Bldg. 001)
 
 
Refreshments at 3:15pm
 
Speaker: Elizabeth C Merritt
P-24 Plasma Physics Group
Los Alamos National Laboratory 
 
 
“Overview of the HED Hydrodynamics Campaigns”
 
 
 
Abstract: 
 
The applicability and implementation of turbulent mix models in the high-energy-density (HED) regime is a fundamental question for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and HED systems in general. The impact of mix includes, for example, the quenching of ignition experiments by mixing hot fuel with cold external materials. However, there is still no consensus in the community on whether the development of mix is even inevitable, or if it is possible to “outrun” the mixing through rapid drives, or if plasma effects may anomalously damp the mixing process. Contrasted with conventional fluid experiments, HED physics experiments take place in a challenging environment for diagnostics. However, since the target begins the experiment in solid phase and lasers allow for fine control of the shock drive, the HED experiments have the advantage of tremendous control over the preparation of materials and interfaces, and access to large, varying regimes of parameter space.
LANL has developed a suite of experiments designed to isolate the individual contributions to mixing in complex, ICF-like systems, which contain multiple layers of material as well as complex, multiple-shock drive profiles. This campaign suite focuses on testing applicability and performance of our BHR mix model this complex, HED regime. We will present a survey of results and in-progress work from these campaigns including experiments examining mixing due to Kelvin-Helmholtz instability growth (NIF Shear), and Rayleigh-Taylor and Richtmeyer-Meshkov instability growth in both simple, single-shock, single-interface systems (ModCons) and multiple-interface and multiple-shock systems (Mshock).