On the dynamics of traveling fronts arising in nanoscale pattern formation

Abstract

We study the stability and dynamics of traveling-front solutions of a modified Kuramoto–Sivashinsky equation arising in the modeling of nanoscale ripple patterns that form when a nominally flat solid surface is bombarded with a broad ion beam at an oblique angle of incidence. Structurally, the linearized operators associated with these fronts have unstable essential spectrum – corresponding to instability of the spatially asymptotic states – and stable point spectrum – corresponding to stability of the transition profile of the front. We show that these waves are linearly orbitally asymptotically stable in appropriate exponentially weighted spaces. While the technical device of exponential weights allows us to accommodate the unstable essential spectrum of individual waves in our linear analysis, it does not shed light on the long-time pattern formation that is observed experimentally and in numerical simulations. To begin to address this issue, we consider a periodic array of unstable front and back solutions. While not an exact solution of the governing equation, this periodic pattern mimics experimentally observed phenomena. Our numerical experiments suggest that the convecting instabilities associated with each individual wave are damped as they pass through transition layers and that this stabilization mechanism underlies the pattern formation seen in experiments.