Physical Review Letters, 14 March 1994, vol.72, (no.11):1678-81.
Step motion, patterns, and kinetic instabilities on crystal surfaces.
Kandel, D.; Weeks, J.D.
Abstract
We study a mesoscopic kinetic model for step flow on crystal surfaces
in the presence of impurities. The evolution of the system of steps in the
small line tension limit leads to the formation of complex highly
connected step patterns. We identify repeating features in the patterns
and calculate them analytically by analyzing a simplified mean-field-like
model. For the same model we also calculate analytically the coarsening
with time of the typical length scale associated with the patterns. All
the analytical results are in excellent quantitative agreement with
numerical simulations.
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