Slow decorrelations in KPZ growth

Patrik L. Ferrari

Published 2008-06-08, updated 2008-06-30Version 2

For stochastic growth models in the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) class in 1+1 dimensions, fluctuations grow as t^{1/3} during time t and the correlation length at a fixed time scales as t^{2/3}. In this note we discuss the scale of time correlations. For a representant of the KPZ class, the polynuclear growth model, we show that the space-time is non-trivially fibred, having slow directions with decorrelation exponent equal to 1 instead of the usual 2/3. These directions are the characteristic curves of the PDE associated to the surface's slope. As a consequence, previously proven results for space-like paths will hold in the whole space-time except along the slow curves.