Coarsening versus pattern formation

It is known that similar physical systems can reveal two quite different ways of behavior, either coarsening, which creates a uniform state or a large-scale structure, or formation of ordered or disordered patterns, which are never homogenized. We present a description of coarsening using simple basic models, the Allen-Cahn equation and the Cahn-Hilliard equation, and discuss the factors that may slow down and arrest the process of coarsening. Among them are pinning of domain walls on inhomogeneities, oscillatory tails of domain walls, nonlocal interactions, and others. Coarsening of pattern domains is also discussed.Comment: 14 pages. To appear in a Comptes Rendus Physique special issue on "Coarsening Dynamics", see https://sites.google.com/site/ppoliti/crp-special-issu

Doubly Degenerate Diffuse Interface Models of Anisotropic Surface Diffusion

We extend the doubly degenerate Cahn-Hilliard (DDCH) models for isotropic surface diffusion, which yield more accurate approximations than classical degenerate Cahn-Hilliard (DCH) models, to the anisotropic case. We consider both weak and strong anisotropies and demonstrate the capabilities of the approach for these cases numerically. The proposed model provides a variational and energy dissipative approach for anisotropic surface diffusion, enabling large scale simulations with material-specific parameters.Comment: 15 pages; 6 figure

Nonlinear dynamics of phase separation in thin films

We present a long-wavelength approximation to the Navier-Stokes Cahn-Hilliard equations to describe phase separation in thin films. The equations we derive underscore the coupled behaviour of free-surface variations and phase separation. We introduce a repulsive substrate-film interaction potential and analyse the resulting fourth-order equations by constructing a Lyapunov functional, which, combined with the regularizing repulsive potential, gives rise to a positive lower bound for the free-surface height. The value of this lower bound depends on the parameters of the problem, a result which we compare with numerical simulations. While the theoretical lower bound is an obstacle to the rupture of a film that initially is everywhere of finite height, it is not sufficiently sharp to represent accurately the parametric dependence of the observed dips or `valleys' in free-surface height. We observe these valleys across zones where the concentration of the binary mixture changes sharply, indicating the formation of bubbles. Finally, we carry out numerical simulations without the repulsive interaction, and find that the film ruptures in finite time, while the gradient of the Cahn--Hilliard concentration develops a singularity.Comment: 26 pages, 20 figures, PDFLaTeX with RevTeX4 macros. A thorough analysis of the equations is presented in arXiv:0805.103

A multiphase Cahn-Hilliard system with mobilities and the numerical simulation of dewetting

We propose in this paper a new multiphase Cahn-Hilliard model with doubly degenerate mobilities. We prove by a formal asymptotic analysis that it approximates with second order accuracy the multiphase surface diffusion flow with mobility coefficients and surface tensions. To illustrate that it lends itself well to numerical approximation, we propose a simple and effective numerical scheme together with a very compact Matlab implementation. We provide the results of various numerical experiments to show the influence of mobility and surface tension coefficients. Thanks to its second order accuracy and its good suitability for numerical implementation, our model is very handy for tackling notably difficult surface diffusion problems. In particular, we show that it can be used very effectively to simulate numerically the dewetting of thin liquid tubes on arbitrary solid supports without requiring nonlinear boundary conditions.Comment: 35 page