Structuring Processes in Expanding Laser-Produced Plasmas

摘要

A plasma expanding into a magnetic field and/or another plasma can undergo several instabilities which will cause spatial nonuniformities and large scale structure to develop. Potential structure forming instabilities include: various forms of the Rayleigh-Taylor or interchange instability, Kevin-Helmholtz instabilities. In addition, experimental geometric factors can also affect expansion uniformity. The phenomena reported here should be of interest to a broad range of disciplines.