Kinetic Simulations of Rayleigh-Taylor Instabilities

Abstract: We report on an ongoing project to develop a large scale Direct Simulation Monte Carlo code. The code is primarily aimed towards applications in astrophysics such as simulations of core-collapse supernovae. It has been tested on shock wave phenomena in the continuum limit and for matter out of equilibrium. In the current work we focus on the study of fluid instabilities. Like shock waves these are routinely used as test-cases for hydrodynamic codes and are discussed to play an important role in the explosion mechanism of core-collapse supernovae. As a first test we study the evolution of a single-mode Rayleigh-Taylor instability at the interface of a light and a heavy fluid in the presence of a gravitational acceleration. To suppress small-wavelength instabilities caused by the irregularity in the separation layer we use a large particle mean free path. The latter leads to the development of a diffusion layer as particles propagate from one fluid into the other. For small amplitudes, when the instability is in the linear regime, we compare its position and shape to the analytic prediction. Despite the broadening of the fluid interface we see a good agreement with the analytic solution. At later times we observe the development of a mushroom like shape caused by secondary Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities as seen in hydrodynamic simulations and consistent with experimental observations.