Dynamical Scaling Implications of Ferrari, Prähofer, and Spohn’s Remarkable Spatial Scaling Results for Facet-Edge Fluctuations

Abstract

Spurred by theoretical predictions from Spohn and coworkers (Phys. Rev. E 69, 035102(R) (2004)), we rederived and extended their result heuristically as well as investigated the scaling properties of the associated Langevin equation in curved geometry with an asymmetric potential. With experimental colleagues we used STM line scans to corroborate their prediction that the fluctuations of the step bounding a facet exhibit scaling properties distinct from those of isolated steps or steps on vicinal surfaces. The correlation functions was shown to go as t 0.15(3) decidedly different from the t 0.26(2) behavior for fluctuations of isolated steps. From the exponents, we were able to categorize the universality, confirming the prediction that the non-linear term of the KPZ equation, long known to play a central role in non-equilibrium phenomena, can also arise from the curvature or potential-asymmetry contribution to the step free energy. We also considered, with modest Monte Carlo simulations, a toy model to show that confinement of a step by another nearby step can modify as predicted the scaling exponents of the step’s fluctuations. This paper is an expansion of a celebratory talk at the 95th Rutgers Statistical Mechanics Conference, May 2006.