The Rayleigh–Taylor instability (RTI) of a laser-accelerated ablative surface of a thin plasma layer in an inertial fusion energy (IFE) target with incompressible electrically conducting plasma in the presence of a transverse magnetic field is investigated using linear stability analysis. A simple theory based on Stokes-lubrication approximation is proposed. It is shown that the effect of a transverse magnetic field is to reduce the growth rate of RTI considerably over the value it would have in the absence of a magnetic field. This is useful in the extraction of IFE efficiently.
