Three-dimenstional rayleigh-taylor instability in decelerating interface experiments

Summary form only given. Our goal is to experimentally confirm or disprove the hypothesis that the Rayleigh-Taylor instability could be responsible for the observed transport of heavy elements from the core of SN1897A, a core-collapse supernova, into its outer layers. Observational astrophysicists have been unable to explain the X-ray or luminosity data from SN1987A. Strong hydrodynamic instabilities could be one explanation of the data. Computer simulations of SN1987A have not been able to reproduce the high velocity of heavy elements in the supernova, however, no simulations to date have taken into account three-dimensional effects. Our experiments bridge the gap between simulations and observations by using intense lasers to create an extremely large amount of energy in a small volume. Experiments performed at the Omega laser facility use ~5 kJ of laser energy to create a blast wave similar to those in supernovae. The blast wave crosses a perturbed interface with a density drop and produces Rayleigh-Taylor growth