Experiment configuration for determining strength effects of Pb via Rayleigh-Taylor ripple growth*

We are using the suppression of Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) growth of ripples as a probe of material strength at high pressures. Previous work has employed the use of RT growth in Pb to infer material strength along a dynamically ramped, low-adiabat loading path. In this work we use shaped laser pulses to create a shock-melt, high pressure ramp re-solidified loading path in a Pb sample with pre-imposed ripples. The compression path is designed using a combination of 1D and 2D simulations with a direct laser ablative drive to create the desired loading path through an ablation layer, x-ray shield, and pusher layers into the sample. The growth factor is calculated through an areal density integration method. We report the design for experiments to be performed at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) and will review the previous work and focus mainly on the design of these challenging experiments.