Perturbation Growth Seeded by a Metal Foam

We have designed experiments for the Omega laser investigating the growth of pertubations between a Cu foam (density $\sim$ 1 g/cc) and a carbonized resorcinol formaldehyde (CRF) foam (density $\sim$ 0.05 g/cc). The interface between the two foams is impulsively accelerated by a 1 ns (7.5 kJ) laser drive in a gold hohlraum (peak T$_{\mathrm{R}}$ $\sim$ 185 eV). The growth is seeded by internal structures in the Cu foam that are characterized by x-ray tomography. Because of the strong dependence of viscosity on ionization, the Cu plasma is expected to have a much lower viscosity (and higher Reynolds number) than a comparable experiment with plastic in place of the Cu, and the Cu experiment is predicted to quickly become turbulent. We have simulated this experiment with the radiation-hydrodynamics code LASNEX (integrated hohlraum simulations). Various void structures were then simulated using the codes KULL and MIRANDA to test the effect of differing initial conditions.