Welcome to ILE Movies and sounds from researches at ILE Japanese A number of interesting phenomena occur in a sequence of laser fusion process. Those are observed not only with experimental methods but also predicted with sophisticate computer simulations. The surface plasma accelerates the capsule inward due to repulsion force of plasma expansion to the outer ward. In the simulation, laser absorption, ray trace, heat conduction, radiation transport, hydrodynamic behaviors, and nuclear reactions, all must be properly treated. This is called Rayleigh-Taylor instability.
Similar situation is seen in the contact surface of laser driven fusion capsule.
This instability is very harmful for laser driven fusion so that a lot of efforts are devoted to understand physics relevant to the instability to put it under controle. In most of simulation code, plasmas consisting of a huge number of ions and electrons are treated as if they were consisting of one liquid component. However recent surprising progress of computer technology enables us to simulate directly microscopic behaviors of ions and electrons moving in static Coulomb fields in plasmas. In this animation you will get a view as if you are on a moving ion. The Senri means thousand miles in Japanese and is the area name of north Osaka where ILE locates.