Kinetic interpretation of the classical Rayleigh-Taylor instability.

Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instabilities are prevalent in many physical regimes ranging from astrophysical to laboratory plasmas and have primarily been studied using fluid models, the majority of which have been ideal fluid models. This work presents a five-dimensional (two spatial dimensions, three velocity space dimensions) simulation using the continuum-kinetic model to study the effect of the collisional mean free path and transport on the instability growth. The continuum-kinetic model provides noise-free access to the full particle distribution function permitting a detailed investigation of the role of kinetic physics in hydrodynamic phenomena such as the RT instability.