Large scale spatio-temporal behaviour in surface growth

Abstract

This paper presents new findings concerning the dynamics of the slow height variations in surfaces produced by the two-dimensional isotropic Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation with an additional nonlinear term. In addition to the disordered cellular patterns of specific size evident at small scales, slow height variations of scale-free character become increasingly evident when the system size is increased. This paper focuses on the parameter range in which the kinetic roughening with eventual saturation in surface roughness and coarseness is obtained, and the statistical and dynamical properties of surfaces in the long-time stationary regime are investigated. The resulting long-range scaling properties of the saturated surface roughness consistent with the power-law shape of the surface spectrum at small wave numbers are obtained in a wider parameter range than previously reported. The temporal properties of these long-range height variations are investigated by analysing the time series of surface roughness fluctuations. The resulting power-spectral densities can be expressed as a generalized Lorentzian whose cut-off frequency varies with system size. The dependence of this lower cut-off frequency on the smallest wave number connects spatial and temporal properties and gives new insight into the surface evolution on large scales.