Impact of ablator thickness and laser drive duration on a platform for supersonic, shockwave-driven hydrodynamic instability experiments

We discuss changes to a target design that improved the quality and consistency of data obtained through a novel experimental platform that enables the study of hydrodynamic instabilities in a compressible regime. The experiment uses a laser to drive steady, supersonic shockwave over well-characterized initial perturbations. Early experiments were adversely affected by inadequate experimental timescales and, potentially, an unintended secondary shockwave. These issues were addressed by extending the 4x10¹³ W/cm² laser pulse from 19 ns to 28 ns, and increasing the ablator thickness from 185 µm to 500 µm. We present data demonstrating the performance of the platform.