Shear-Driven Turbulence in High-Energy-Density Plasmas

Shear is the original source of hydrodynamic turbulence. The plane mixing layer, in which two flowing streams drive instability and turbulence, is an extensively characterized canonical fluid dynamics reference case. Turbulent mix models derived from these canonical systems have been applied to the mixing of materials in inertial confinement fusion experiments as well as in high-energy-density (HED) instability experiments. The applicability of these models at these regimes, far from where they were derived, has an open question, with some suggestions that while residual kinetic energy resulting from large mode perturbations is likely present, turbulence may not actually be able to develop from integral driving scales due either to the short durations of the experiments or to anomalous plasma dissipation effects. Conversely, there have also been suggestions that coupling between small- and large- scale modes may enhance mixing and turbulence beyond what large-driving-mode analyses suggest. This work affirms that mixing layers consistent with classical signatures of developed turbulence can be produced in a short-lived HED plasma, and that turbulent universality apparently holds in systems 10^10 times more energetic than the systems for which these flows was originally observed.