Ablative Rayleigh-Taylor instability in three dimensions

A fully three-dimensional (3D) laser-matter interaction code is developed and used to investigate 3D mixing mechanisms in planar targets accelerated by single-sided laser illumination. While linear Rayleigh-Taylor growth rates from 3D perturbed simulations are identical to those obtained from 2D simulations, nonlinear evolution differs significantly. Vortex stretching alters the ablative flow pattern. Subsequently, the 3D Rayleigh-Taylor spikes are larger in cross section than the 2D spikes, indicating a higher rate of mixing.