Relativistic effects on the Richtmyer-Meshkov instability

An investigation of the relativistic effects on the Richtmeyer-Meshkov (RM) instability is presented. It is found that the relativistic effects weaken the RM instability as compared to the nonrelativistic case, both in two and three spatial dimensions. Linear stability is studied analytically and compared with numerical results in the linear growth regime. Finally, based on the numerical results, a general expression characterizing the nonlinear evolution of the instability is proposed.