Successive Picket Drive for Mitigating the Ablative Richtmyer–Meshkov Instability

The ablative Richtmyer–Meshkov instability (ARMI) is crucial to the successful ignition implosion of the inertial confinement fusion (ICF) because of its action as the seed of the Rayleigh–Taylor instability. In usual ICF implosions, the first shock driven by various foots of the pulses plays a central role in the ARMI growth. We propose a new scheme for refraining from ARMI with a pulse of successive pickets. With the successive-picket pulse design, a rippled capsule surface is compressed by three successive shocks with sequentially strengthening intensities and ablated stabilization, and the ablative Richtmyer–Meshkov growth is mitigated quite effectively. Our numerical simulations and theoretical analyses identify the validity of this scheme.