Self-consistent growth rate of the Rayleigh–Taylor instability in an ablatively accelerating plasma

The linear stability of an ablating plasma is investigated as an eigenvalue problem by assuming the plasma to be at the stationary state. For various structures of the ablating plasma, the growth rate is found to be expressed well in the form γ=α(kg)1/2 −βkVa, where α=0.9, β≂3–4, and Va is the flow velocity across the ablation front, and is found to agree well with recent two-dimensional simulations in a classical transport regime. Short-wavelength lasers inducing enhanced mass ablation are suggested to be advantageous to stable implosion because of the ablative stabilization.