Surf. Sci. 432, 101-114 (1999).
Effect of Step-Step Interactions on the Fluctuations of an
Individual Step on a Vicinal Surface
H.-C. Jeong and J. D. Weeks
Abstract
We relate properties of an anisotropic continuum model of a two
dimensional vicinal surface to those of a model with fluctuating and
interacting steps. We show that analysis of the fluctuations of an
individual step in the array provides information about the length scale on
which the surface has reached equilibrium and can be used to estimate
fundamental step parameters from locally equilibrated surfaces. Monte Carlo
simulations of a stable vicinal surface using the terrace-step-kink model
agree with the theoretical predictions. We further apply this analysis to
steps on an unstable surface during reconstruction-induced faceting
and show that it can be used to determine whether the faceting process is in
the nucleation or spinodal decomposition regime.
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