Test of thermal transport models through dynamic overpressure stabilization of ablation-front perturbation growth in laser-driven CH foils.

Heat-flow-induced dynamic overpressure at the perturbed ablation front of an inertial confinement fusion target can stabilize the ablative Richtmyer-Meshkov-like instability and mitigate the subsequent ablative Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability. A series of experiments was performed on the OMEGA laser to quantify the dynamic overpressure stabilization during the shock transit. Analysis of the experimental data using hydrocode simulations shows that the observed oscillatory evolution of the ablation-front perturbations depends on Dc, the size of the thermal conduction zone, and the fluid velocity in the blowoff region Vb1 that are sensitive to the thermal transport model used. We show that the simulations match the experiment well when the time dependence of the heat-flux inhibition is taken into account using a recently developed nonlocal heat-transport model [V. N. Goncharov et al., Phys. Plasmas 13, 012702 (2006)].