Strong Coupling in Conserved Surface Roughening: A New Universality Class?
Accepted version
Peer-reviewed
Repository URI
Repository DOI
Change log
Authors
Abstract
The Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation defines the main universality class for nonlinear growth and roughening of surfaces. But under certain conditions, a conserved KPZ equation (CKPZ) is thought to set the universality class instead. This has non-mean-field behavior only in spatial dimension d<2. We point out here that CKPZ is incomplete: It omits a symmetry-allowed nonlinear gradient term of the same order as the one retained. Adding this term, we find a parameter regime where the one-loop renormalization group flow diverges. This suggests a phase transition to a new growth phase, possibly ruled by a strong-coupling fixed point and thus described by a new universality class, for any d>1. In this phase, numerical integration of the model in d=2 gives clear evidence of non-mean-field behavior.
Description
Keywords
Journal Title
Conference Name
Journal ISSN
1079-7114
Volume Title
Publisher
Publisher DOI
Sponsorship
European Research Council (740269)
Royal Society (RP170002)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (1781654)