Potential for the Vishniac instability in ionizing shock waves propagating into cold gases

Abstract

The Vishniac instability was posited as an instability that could affect supernova remnants in their late stage of evolution when subject to strong radiative cooling, which can drive the effective ratio of specific heats below 1.3. The potential importance of this instability to these astrophysical object has motivated a number of laser-driven laboratory studies. However the Vishniac instability is essentially a dynamical instability that should operate independently of whatever physical processes happen to reduce the ratio of specific heats. In this paper we examine the possibility that ionization and molecular dissociation processes can achieve this, and we show that this is possible for a certain range of shock wave Mach numbers for ionizing/dissociating shock waves propagating into cold atomic and molecular gases.