RT Journal Article
T1 Variational mean-field study of a continuum model of crystalline tensionless surfaces
A1 Moro, Esteban
A1 Cuerno, Rodolfo
AB We study analytically the equilibrium and near-equilibrium properties of a model of a d-dimensional surface relaxing via linear surface diffusion and subject to a lattice potential. We employ the variational mean-field formalism introduced by Saito for the study of the sine-Gordon model. In equilibrium, our variational theory predicts a first-order roughening transition between a flat low-temperature phase and a rough high-temperature phase with the properties of the linear molecular-beam epitaxy equation. Moreover, the study of a Gaussian approximation to the Langevin dynamics of the system indicates that the surface shows hysteresis when temperature is continuously tuned. Out of equilibrium, these approximate Langevin dynamics show that the surface mobility can have different behaviors as a function of a driving flux. Some considerations are made regarding different underlying lattices, and connections are drawn to related models or different approaches to the same model we study.
PB The American Physical Society
SN 1539-3755
YR 2001
FD 2001-03
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10016/6942
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10016/6942
LA eng
NO 9 pages, 6 figures.-- PACS nrs.: 64.60.Ht, 64.60.Cn, 68.35.Rh, 81.10.Aj.-- ArXiv pre-print available at: http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/9912013
NO This work was partially supported by DGES Grant Nos. PB96-0119 and HB1999-0018, and EPSRC Grant No. GR/M04426.
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RD 3 jun. 2024