Magneto-Rayleigh-Taylor instability driven by a rotating magnetic field: Cylindrical liner configuration

Abstract

We propose using a directional time-varying (rotating) driving magnetic field to suppress magneto-Rayleigh-Taylor (MRT) instability in dynamic Z-pinches. A rotational drive magnetic field is equivalent to two magnetic-field components, Θ and Z, that alternate in time, referred to as an alternate Theta-Z-pinch configuration. We consider the finitely thick cylindrical liner configuration in this paper. We numerically integrate the perturbation equation to stagnation time based on the optimal background unperturbed trajectories. We assess the cumulative growth of the dominant mode selected by some mechanism at the beginning of an implosion. The maximum e-folding number at stagnation of the dominant mode of an optimized alternate Theta-Z-pinch is significantly lower than that of the standard Theta- or Z-pinch. The directional rotation of the magnetic field contributes to suppress the instabilities, independent of the finite thickness. The finite thickness effect plays a role only when the orientation of the magnetic field varies in time whereas it does not appear in the standard Theta- or Z-pinch. The rotating frequency of the magnetic field and the thickness of liner are both having a monotonic effect on suppression. Their synergistic effect can enhance the suppression on MRT instability. Because the MRT instability can be well suppressed in this way, the alternate Theta-Z-pinch configuration has potential applications in liner inertial fusion. This work is supported by the NSFC (Grant Nos. 11405167, 51407171, 11571293, 11605188, and 11605189) and the Foundation of the China Academy of Engineering Physics (No. 2015B0201023).