Phase transition in tensionless surfaces

Abstract

We study the critical behavior of the Laplacian roughening model, which describes the growth of tensionless surfaces. This type of growth phenomena is very important, for instance, in biological membranes and in molecular beam epitaxy. We summarize previous analytical and numerical results and point out their contradictions and differences, thus making clear the context of our work. Our contribution, achieved through large-scale numerical simulations, is the confirmation that the model exhibits a single continuous phase transition: the transition takes place between a continuum massless (i.e., with infinite correlation length) bilaplacian behavior and a massive propagator (finite correlation length).