The Strawberry Growth Underneath the Nettle: the emergence of entrepreneurs in China

Chinese entrepreneurs innovatively manage organisations in the absence of strong economic institutions, under conditions of high environmental and technological uncertainty. This paper presents the findings of an empirical study designed to investigate how Chinese entrepreneurs can be successful in such an environment. We found that Chinese entrepreneurial activity relies on social institutions rather than on economic institutions. We offer a sociological theory which explains why the reliance on social institutions leads to such an unprecedented success. We conclude that the strong rule-enforcement mechanisms generate reliable behavioral patterns, and that these in turn efficiently reduce uncertainty to tolerable levels.networks;social capital;evolutionary economics;Comparative business systems;private sector in China

Drift causes anomalous exponents in growth processes

The effect of a drift term in the presence of fixed boundaries is studied for the one-dimensional Edwards-Wilkinson equation, to reveal a general mechanism that causes a change of exponents for a very broad class of growth processes. This mechanism represents a relevant perturbation and therefore is important for the interpretation of experimental and numerical results. In effect, the mechanism leads to the roughness exponent assuming the same value as the growth exponent. In the case of the Edwards-Wilkinson equation this implies exponents deviating from those expected by dimensional analysis.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, REVTeX; accepted for publication in PRL; added note and reference

Damping of Oscillations in Layer-by-Layer Growth

We present a theory for the damping of layer-by-layer growth oscillations in molecular beam epitaxy. The surface becomes rough on distances larger than a layer coherence length which is substantially larger than the diffusion length. The damping time can be calculated by a comparison of the competing roughening and smoothening mechanisms. The dependence on the growth conditions, temperature and deposition rate, is characterized by a power law. The theoretical results are confirmed by computer simulations.Comment: 19 pages, RevTex, 5 Postscript figures, needs psfig.st

Morphological stability of electromigration-driven vacancy islands

The electromigration-induced shape evolution of two-dimensional vacancy islands on a crystal surface is studied using a continuum approach. We consider the regime where mass transport is restricted to terrace diffusion in the interior of the island. In the limit of fast attachment/detachment kinetics a circle translating at constant velocity is a stationary solution of the problem. In contrast to earlier work [O. Pierre-Louis and T.L. Einstein, Phys. Rev. B 62, 13697 (2000)] we show that the circular solution remains linearly stable for arbitrarily large driving forces. The numerical solution of the full nonlinear problem nevertheless reveals a fingering instability at the trailing end of the island, which develops from finite amplitude perturbations and eventually leads to pinch-off. Relaxing the condition of instantaneous attachment/detachment kinetics, we obtain non-circular elongated stationary shapes in an analytic approximation which compares favorably to the full numerical solution.Comment: 12 page

Interfaces with a single growth inhomogeneity and anchored boundaries

The dynamics of a one dimensional growth model involving attachment and detachment of particles is studied in the presence of a localized growth inhomogeneity along with anchored boundary conditions. At large times, the latter enforce an equilibrium stationary regime which allows for an exact calculation of roughening exponents. The stochastic evolution is related to a spin Hamiltonian whose spectrum gap embodies the dynamic scaling exponent of late stages. For vanishing gaps the interface can exhibit a slow morphological transition followed by a change of scaling regimes which are studied numerically. Instead, a faceting dynamics arises for gapful situations.Comment: REVTeX, 11 pages, 9 Postscript figure

An Exactly Solved Model of Three Dimensional Surface Growth in the Anisotropic KPZ Regime

We generalize the surface growth model of Gates and Westcott to arbitrary inclination. The exact steady growth velocity is of saddle type with principal curvatures of opposite sign. According to Wolf this implies logarithmic height correlations, which we prove by mapping the steady state of the surface to world lines of free fermions with chiral boundary conditions.Comment: 9 pages, REVTEX, epsf, 3 postscript figures, submitted to J. Stat. Phys, a wrong character is corrected in eqs. (31) and (32

Magnetic coupling in highly-ordered NiO/Fe3O4(110): Ultrasharp magnetic interfaces vs. long-range magnetoelastic interactions

We present a laterally resolved X-ray magnetic dichroism study of the magnetic proximity effect in a highly ordered oxide system, i.e. NiO films on Fe3O4(110). We found that the magnetic interface shows an ultrasharp electronic, magnetic and structural transition from the ferrimagnet to the antiferromagnet. The monolayer which forms the interface reconstructs to NiFe2O4 and exhibits an enhanced Fe and Ni orbital moment, possibly caused by bonding anisotropy or electronic interaction between Fe and Ni cations. The absence of spin-flop coupling for this crystallographic orientation can be explained by a structurally uncompensated interface and additional magnetoelastic effects

Phenomenology of ageing in the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation

We study ageing during surface growth processes described by the one-dimensional Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation. Starting from a flat initial state, the systems undergo simple ageing in both correlators and linear responses and its dynamical scaling is characterised by the ageing exponents a=-1/3, b=-2/3, lambda_C=lambda_R=1 and z=3/2. The form of the autoresponse scaling function is well described by the recently constructed logarithmic extension of local scale-invariance.Comment: Latex2e, 5 pages, with 4 figures, final for