The effect of viscosity and resistivity on Rayleigh-Taylor instability induced mixing in magnetized high energy density plasmas

Abstract

This work numerically investigates the role of viscosity and resistivity on Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities in magnetized high-energy-density (HED) plasmas for a high Atwood number and high plasma beta regimes surveying across plasma beta and magnetic Prandtl numbers. The numerical simulations are performed using the visco-resistive magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations. Results presented here show that the inclusion of self-consistent viscosity and resistivity in the system drastically changes the growth of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability (RTI) as well as modifies its internal structure at smaller scales. It is seen here that the viscosity has a stabilizing effect on the RTI. Moreover, the viscosity inhibits the development of small scale structures and also modifies the morphology of the tip of the RTI spikes. On the other hand, the resistivity reduces the magnetic field stabilization supporting the development of small scale structures. The morphology of the RTI spikes is seen to be unaffected by the presence of resistivity in the system. An additional novelty of this work is in the disparate viscosity and resistivity profiles that may exist in HED plasmas and their impact on RTI growth, morphology, and the resulting turbulence spectra. Furthermore, this work shows that the dynamics of the magnetic field is independent of viscosity and likewise the resistivity does not affect the dissipation of enstrophy and kinetic energy. In addition, power-law scalings of enstrophy, kinetic energy, and magnetic field energy are provided in both injection range and inertial sub-range which could be useful for understanding RTI induced turbulent mixing in HED laboratory and astrophysical plasmas and could aid in the interpretation of observations of RTI-induced turbulence spectra.

References in corpus (9)

• The Protogalactic Origin for Cosmic Magnetic Fields
• Thermonuclear Supernovae: Simulations of the Deflagration Stage and Their Implications
• Non-spherical Core Collapse Supernovae I. Neutrino-Driven Convection, Rayleigh-Taylor Instabilities, and the Formation and Propagation of Metal Clumps
• A Million-Second Chandra View of Cassiopeia A
• On the Origin of Radial Magnetic Fields in Young Supernova Remnants
• Nonlinear Evolution of the Magnetohydrodynamic Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
• The Braginskii model of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability. I. Effects of self-generated magnetic fields and thermal conduction in two dimensions
• Observation of Rayleigh-Taylor-Instability Evolution in a Plasma with Magnetic and Viscous Effects
• An affine reconstructed algorithm for diffusion on triangular grids using the nodal discontinuous Galerkin method

Cited by in corpus (3)

• A kinetic interpretation of the classical Rayleigh-Taylor instability
• Coupling of Alfvén and magnetosonic waves in rotating Hall magnetoplasmas
• Rayleigh-Taylor instability in inhomogeneous relativistic classical and degenerate electron-ion magnetoplasmas