The Magneto-Hydrodynamic Richtmyer-Meshkov Instability

Ravi Samtaney

Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Princeton University

Abstract-
In the past two decades the Richtmyer-Meshkov (RM) instability has become the subject of extensive experimental, theoretical and computational research due to its importance in technological applications such as inertial confinement fusion, as well as astrophysical phenomena such as supernovae collapse. In this talk we will present recent results from nonlinear simulations of the Richtmyer-Meshkov instability in the presence of a magnetic field.

The seminar will be divided into three segments. In the first segment, we will present a primer on compressible magneto-hydrodynamics (MHD). In the second segment we will present numerical evidence that the growth of the Richtmyer-Meshkov instability is suppressed in the presence of a magnetic field. This is due to a bifurcation which occurs when the incident shock refracts at the density interface. The result is that baroclinically generated vorticity is transported away from the interface to a pair of slow magnetosonic shocks. Consequently, the density interface is devoid of vorticity and its growth and associated mixing is completely suppressed. The third segment on the talk will focus on the numerical method to obtain the aforementioned results. We will discuss the implementation of an unsplit upwinding method to solve the ideal MHD equations with adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) using the CHOMBO framework. The solenoidal property of the magnetic field is enforced using a projection method which is solved using a multigrid technique.


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