Observation of Rayleigh - Taylor growth to short wavelengths on Nike

The uniform and smooth focal profile of the Nike KrF laser [S. Obenschain et al., Phys. Plasmas 3, 2098 (1996)] was used to ablatively accelerate 40 μm thick polystyrene planar targets with pulse shaping to minimize shock heating of the compressed material. The foils had imposed small-amplitude sinusoidal wave perturbations of 60, 30, 20, and 12.5 μm wavelength. The shortest wavelength is near the ablative stabilization cutoff for Rayleigh - Taylor growth. Modification of the saturated wave structure due to random laser imprint was observed. Excellent agreement was found between the two-dimensional simulations and experimental data for most cases where the laser imprint was not dominant. copyright 1999 American Institute of Physics