The Study of Radiative Effects on Turbulent High Energy Density Plasmas

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This project seeks to learn whether or not a turbulent state can be created and understood in a laboratory high energy density plasma. High-energy-density (HED) plasmas, a hot soup of electrons, ions and photons, exist throughout our universe in an extreme state with high temperatures of over 10,000 K and very high densities. HED astrophysical systems include accretion phenomena, supernovae remnants, and supersonic outflows or jets, to name a few. On the astrophysical scales, such as in supernovae, HED plasma systems can be thousands of miles in size. In the laboratory, in a fusion experiment for example, an HED plasma can be one tenth of a centimeter. This study will investigate the impacts of the strong radiation carried by photons in a laboratory-sized HED plasma on the properties of complex fluid-like turbulence typical of plasmas at lower pressures and densities. Better understanding of this fundamental behavior in laboratory-sized plasmas can inform understanding of HED plasmas in general. The aim of this work is to investigate the effect of radiation on late-time, multi-mode hydrodynamics of an HED plasma using an integrated approach combining theory, computation and experiments. To do so, first, a late-time, hydrodynamically unstable system will be created and observed. This will be accomplished by measuring the dependence of the unstable growth of density variations and multimode perturbations, using techniques developed by the team for ongoing experiments at the National Ignition Facility and the Omega Laser Facility. These measurements will enable validation of multidimensional radiation hydrodynamics codes to design an experiment that explores the effect of radiation on the evolution of late-time hydrodynamic processes.