Observations of Modulated Shock Waves in Solid Targets Driven by Spatially Modulated Laser Beams

68 LLE Review, Volume 90 Introduction Shock waves produced by laser-driven ablation are an important part of studies of inertial confinement fusion (ICF),1,2 the equation of state of materials (EOS),3–5 laboratory astrophysics,6,7 and other high-energy-density sciences. In ICF, nonuniformities in the drive laser can produce nonuniform shocks that create mass perturbations in the target.2 These perturbations can be amplified by the Rayleigh–Taylor (RT)1 instability to a sufficiently large enough level to disrupt the implosion and reduce its performance. The propagation of these modulated shocks is determined by the physics of the laser-interaction region and stabilization processes;8,9 hence, their measurement provides information about the intervening processes. Modulations in drive intensity can also be used to verify the scaling of shock strength (velocity) with drive intensity to better understand coupling efficiency and its scaling with intensity.