John Roush with Prof. Charles Rosenblatt 

 Growth Rates in the Linear Domain of the Rayleigh-Taylor Instability

The Rayleigh-Taylor Instability refers to the acceleration of a dense fluid through a less-dense fluid, often by the force of gravity. In such a case, it is difficult to mechanically establish the initial density gradient without introducing any mechanical perturbations. It is possible, however, using a strongly paramagnetic dense fluid in the presence of a magnetic field gradient. It is the goal of this project to show that this method produces results in agreement with previous work and accepted theory. This will be accomplished by studying the initial behavior of the fluid interface just after the magnetic field gradient is removed, specifically the exponential growth rate of the individual perturbation modes. In the early stages of the instability these growth rates are well-modeled by linear stability theory and can be directly compared to numerical calculations.