SUPPRESSION OF THE RAYLEIGH-TAYLOR INSTABILITY BY CONVECTION IN ABLATIVELY ACCELERATED LASER TARGETS

An analytical model based on the WKB approximation is developed to describe the suppression of the short-wavelength Rayleigh-Taylor instability by convective flow. The boundary-value problem for the instability growth rate is reduced to the solution of a system of algebraic equations with the coefficients depending upon the unperturbed variables. The method, which is applicable for perturbation with wavelengths small compared with the density scale length, is applied to analyze the instability in stationary, ablating plasmas with convection and strong inhomogeneity.