Investigating Turbulent Mix in HEDLP Experiments

Mix is an important issue in High Energy Density Laboratory Plasmas (HEDLP), specifically Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) implosions. In ICF, shock waves traverse fuel capsule defects and material interfaces, and due to hydrodynamic instabilities transitioning into turbulence, these shocks can initiate mix between shell and fuel, degrading yield. To this end, a series of laser-driven mix experiments has been designed for the OMEGA and NIF laser facilities to investigate the turbulent mixing of materials proceeded by reshock and shear, which initiates Richtmyer-Meshkov and\or Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities on a tracer layer. The experiments are designed to understand if the Besnard-Harlow-Rauenzahn (BHR) mix model that has been implemented in LANL's RAGE hydrodynamics code has coefficients that are properly determined for an HEDLP environment.