Numerical study of roughness distributions in nonlinear models of interface growth

In this work, the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation in (1+1) dimensions is studied by means of numerical simulations, focussing on the two-times evolution of an interface in the absence of any disordered environment. This work shows that even in this simple case, a rich aging behavior develops. A multiplicative aging scenario for the two-times roughness of the system is observed, characterized by the same growth exponent as in the stationary regi...

The dynamic scaling of curved interfaces presents features that are strikingly different from those of the planar ones. Spherical surfaces above one dimension are flat because the noise is irrelevant in such cases. Kinetic roughening is thus a one-dimensional phenomenon characterized by a marginal logarithmic amplitude of the fluctuations. Models characterized by a planar dynamical exponent $z>1$, which include the most common stochastic growth equations, suffer a loss of cor...

We study a restricted solid-on-solid (RSOS) model involving deposition and evaporation with probabilities p and 1-p, respectively, in one-dimensional substrates. It presents a crossover from Edwards-Wilkinson (EW) to Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) scaling for p~0.5. The associated KPZ equation is analytically derived, exhibiting a coefficient lambda of the nonlinear term proportional to q=p-1/2, which is confirmed numerically by calculation of tilt-dependent growth velocities for ...

We report on an extensive numerical investigation of the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation describing non-equilibrium interfaces. Attention is paid to the dependence of the growth exponents on the details of the distribution of the noise. All distributions considered are delta-correlated in space and time, and have finite cumulants. We find that the exponents become progressively more sensitive to details of the distribution with increasing dimensionality. We discuss the implicati...

Growth of interfaces during vapor deposition is analyzed on a discrete lattice. It leads to finding distribution of local heights, measurable for any lattice model. Invariance in the change of this distribution in time is used to determine the finite size effects in various models The analysis is applied to the discrete linear growth equation and Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation. A new model is devised that shows early convergence to the KPZ dynamics. Various known cons...

The Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation is accepted as a generic description of interfacial growth. In several recent studies, however, values of the roughness exponent alpha have been reported that are significantly less than that associated with the KPZ equation. A feature common to these studies is the presence of holes (bubbles and overhangs) in the bulk and an interface that is smeared out. We study a model of this type in which the density of the bulk and sharpness of th...

The Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation has been connected to a large number of important stochastic processes in physics, chemistry and growth phenomena, ranging from classical to quantum physics. The central quest in this field is the search for ever more precise universal growth exponents. Notably, exact growth exponents are only known for $1+1$ dimensions. In this work, we present physical and geometric analytical methods that directly associate these exponents to the frac...

Interfacial roughening denotes the nonequilibrium process by which an initially flat interface reaches its equilibrium state, characterized by the presence of thermally excited capillary waves. Roughening of fluid interfaces has been first analyzed by Flekkoy and Rothman [Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 260 (1995)], where the dynamic scaling exponents in the weakly damped case in two dimensions were found to agree with the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang universality class. We extend this work by t...

We study height and roughness distributions of films grown with discrete Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) models in a small time regime which is expected to parallel the typical experimental conditions. Those distributions are measured with square windows of sizes $8\leq r\leq 128$ gliding through a much larger surface. Results for models with weak finite-size corrections indicate that the absolute value of the skewness and the value of the kurtosis of height distributions converge ...

We study numerically finite-size corrections in scaling relations for roughness distributions of various interface growth models. The most common relation, which considers the average roughness $<w_2>$ as scaling factor, is not obeyed in the steady states of a group of ballistic-like models in 2+1 dimensions, even when very large system sizes are considered. On the other hand, good collapse of the same data is obtained with a scaling relation that involves the root mean squar...