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A Linear Energy Stable Scheme for a Thin Film Model Without Slope Selection
We present a linear numerical scheme for a model of epitaxial thin film growth without slope selection. the PDE, which is a nonlinear, fourth-order parabolic equation, is the L2 gradient flow of the energy ∫Ω(-1/2 ln(1 + |ø|2) + ε2 2 |Ø(x)|2) dx. the idea of convex-concave decomposition of the energy functional is applied, which results in a numerical scheme that is unconditionally energy stable, i.e., energy dissipative. the particular decomposition used here places the nonlinear term in the concave part of the energy, in contrast to a previous convexity splitting scheme. as a result, the numerical scheme is fully linear at each time step and unconditionally solvable. Collocation Fourier spectral differentiation is used in the spatial discretization, and the unconditional energy stability is established in the fully discrete setting using a detailed energy estimate. We present numerical simulation results for a sequence of values ranging from 0.02 to 0.1. in particular, the long time simulations show the -log(t) decay law for the energy and the t 1/2 growth law for the surface roughness, in agreement with theoretical analysis and experimental/numerical observations in earlier works. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011
Thin film evolution equations from (evaporating) dewetting liquid layers to epitaxial growth
In the present contribution we review basic mathematical results for three
physical systems involving self-organising solid or liquid films at solid
surfaces. The films may undergo a structuring process by dewetting,
evaporation/condensation or epitaxial growth, respectively. We highlight
similarities and differences of the three systems based on the observation that
in certain limits all of them may be described using models of similar form,
i.e., time evolution equations for the film thickness profile. Those equations
represent gradient dynamics characterized by mobility functions and an
underlying energy functional.
Two basic steps of mathematical analysis are used to compare the different
system. First, we discuss the linear stability of homogeneous steady states,
i.e., flat films; and second the systematics of non-trivial steady states,
i.e., drop/hole states for dewetting films and quantum dot states in epitaxial
growth, respectively. Our aim is to illustrate that the underlying solution
structure might be very complex as in the case of epitaxial growth but can be
better understood when comparing to the much simpler results for the dewetting
liquid film. We furthermore show that the numerical continuation techniques
employed can shed some light on this structure in a more convenient way than
time-stepping methods.
Finally we discuss that the usage of the employed general formulation does
not only relate seemingly not related physical systems mathematically, but does
as well allow to discuss model extensions in a more unified way
An unconditionally energy stable finite difference scheme for a stochastic Cahn-Hilliard equation
In this work, the MMC-TDGL equation, a stochastic Cahn-Hilliard equation is
solved numerically by using the finite difference method in combination with a
convex splitting technique of the energy functional. For the non-stochastic
case, we develop an unconditionally energy stable difference scheme which is
proved to be uniquely solvable. For the stochastic case, by adopting the same
splitting of the energy functional, we construct a similar and uniquely
solvable difference scheme with the discretized stochastic term. The resulted
schemes are nonlinear and solved by Newton iteration. For the long time
simulation, an adaptive time stepping strategy is developed based on both
first- and second-order derivatives of the energy. Numerical experiments are
carried out to verify the energy stability, the efficiency of the adaptive time
stepping and the effect of the stochastic term.Comment: This paper has been accepted for publication in SCIENCE CHINA
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