Single-mode Rayleigh-Taylor growth-rate measurements with the OMEGA laser system

The results from a series of single-mode Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability growth experiments performed on the OMEGA laser system using planar targets are reported. Planar targets with imposed mass perturbations were accelerated using five to six 351-nm laser beams overlapped with total intensities up to 2.5x1014 W/cm2. Experiments were performed with both 3-ns ramp and 3-ns flat-topped temporal pulse shapes. The use of distributed phase plates and smoothing by spectral dispersion resulted in a laser-irradiation nonuniformity of 4%-7% over a 600-μm-diam region defined by the 90% intensity contour. The temporal growth of the modulation in optical depth was measured using through-foil radiography and was detected with an x-ray framing camera for CH targets with and without a foam buffer. The growth of both 31-μm and 60-μm wavelength perturbations was found to be in good agreement with ORCHID simulations when the experimental details, including noise, were included. The addition of a 30-mg/cc, 100-μm-thick polystyrene foam buffer layer resulted in reduced growth of the 31-μm perturbation and essentially unchanged growth for the 60-μm case when compared to targets without foam