Reconstructed Rough Phases During Surface Growth

Chen-Shan Chin, Marcel den Nijs

Published 2000-05-18Version 1

Flat surface phases are unstable during growth and known to become rough. This does not exclude the possibility that surface reconstruction order persists in rough growing surfaces, in analogy with so-called equilibrium reconstructed rough phases. We investigate this in the context of KPZ type dynamics, using the restricted solid on solid model with negative mono-atomic step energies. Long range reconstruction order is strictly speaking absent in the thermodynamic limit, but the reconstruction domain walls become trapped at surface ridge lines, and the reconstruction order parameter fluctuates critically with the KPZ dynamic exponent at finite but large length scales.