Linear Perturbation Amplification in Self-Similar Ablation Flows of Inertial Confinement Fusion

Exact similarity solutions for inviscid compressible ablative flows in slab symmetry with nonlinear heat conduction are proposed for studying unsteadiness and compressibility effects on the hydrodynamic stability of ablation fronts relevant to inertial confinement fusion. Both the similarity solutions and their linear perturbations are numerically computed with a dynamical multidomain Chebyshev pseudospectral method. Herewith the first analysis of laser-imprinting based on a dynamic solution is presented, showing that maximum perturbation amplification occurs for a laser-intensity modulation of zero transverse wave number, with growth dominated by the mean flow stretching.