Critical wetting of a class of nonequilibrium interfaces: A mean-field picture

Abstract

A self-consistent mean-field method is used to study critical wetting transitions under nonequilibrium conditions by analyzing Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) interfaces in the presence of a bounding substrate. In the case of positive KPZ nonlinearity a single (Gaussian) regime is found. On the contrary, interfaces corresponding to negative nonlinearities lead to three different regimes of critical behavior for the surface order parameter: (i) a trivial Gaussian regime, (ii) a weak-fluctuation regime with a trivially located critical point and nontrivial exponents, and (iii) a highly nontrivial strong-fluctuation regime, for which we provide a full solution by finding the zeros of parabolic-cylinder functions. These analytical results are also verified by solving numerically the self-consistent equation in each case. Analogies with and differences from equilibrium critical wetting as well as nonequilibrium complete wetting are also discussed.