Comparison of the evolution of Rayleigh–Taylor instability during the coasting phase of the central ignition and the double-cone ignition schemes

Abstract

The Rayleigh–Taylor (RT) instability has been a great challenge for robust fusion ignition. In this paper, the evolution of the RT instability at the fuel inner interface during the coasting phase is investigated for the central ignition scheme [Hurricane et al., Rev Mod Phys. 95, 025005 (2023)] and the double-cone ignition (DCI) scheme [Zhang et al., Philos. Trans. R. Soc. A. 378, 20200015 (2020)]. It is found that the spherical convergent effect can be helpful for smoothing the disturbance by merging the spikes in the azimuthal direction. For the DCI scheme, the pressure gradient in the same direction with the density gradient at the fuel inner interface can further prevent the disturbance from growing. For the example case with an initial disturbance amplitude as large as 20 μm, the DCI scheme can still reach a high-density isochoric plasma with an areal density of 2.18 g/cm2 at the stagnation moment, providing favorable conditions for fast ignition by the relativistic electron beam.