Interplay between phase ordering and roughening on growing films

We study the interplay between surface roughening and phase separation during the growth of binary films. Renormalization group calculations are performed on a pair of equations coupling the interface height and order parameter fluctuations. We find a larger roughness exponent at the critical point of the order parameter compared to the disordered phase, and an increase in the upper critical dimension for the surface roughening transition from two to four. Numerical simulations performed on a solid-on-solid model with two types of deposited particles corroborate some of these findings. However, for a range of parameters not accessible to perturbative analysis, we find non-universal behavior with a continuously varying dynamic exponent.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure

Dynamic Scaling Phenomena in Growth Processes

Inhomogeneities in deposition may lead to formation of rough surfaces, whose height fluctuations can be probed directly by scanning microscopy, or indirectly by scattering. Analytical or numerical treatments of simple growth models suggest that, quite generally, the height fluctuations have a self-similar character. The roughness and dynamic exponents are expected to be universal; depending only on the underlying mechanism that generates self-similar roughness. Despite its ubiquitous occurrence in theory and simulations, experimental confirmations of dynamic scaling have been rare. I shall briefly review the theoretical foundations of dynamic scaling, and suggest possible reasons for discrepancies with experimental results.Comment: Plain TEX, 10 pages, no figures. For the Proceedings of the "Fourth International Conference on Surface X-Ray and Neutron Scattering," Lake Geneva, June 1995. To be published in a special issue of Physica

Attractive and repulsive polymer-mediated forces between scale-free surfaces

We consider forces acting on objects immersed in, or attached to, long fluctuating polymers. The confinement of the polymer by the obstacles results in polymer-mediated forces that can be repulsive (due to loss of entropy) or attractive (if some or all surfaces are covered by adsorbing layers). The strength and sign of the force in general depends on the detailed shape and adsorption properties of the obstacles, but assumes simple universal forms if characteristic length scales associated with the objects are large. This occurs for scale-free shapes (such as a flat plate, straight wire, or cone), when the polymer is repelled by the obstacles, or is marginally attracted to it (close to the depinning transition where the absorption length is infinite). In such cases, the separation $h$ between obstacles is the only relevant macroscopic length scale, and the polymer mediated force equals ${\cal A} \, k_{B}T/h$, where $T$ is temperature. The amplitude ${\cal A}$ is akin to a critical exponent, depending only on geometry and universality of the polymer system. The value of ${\cal A}$, which we compute for simple geometries and ideal polymers, can be positive or negative. Remarkably, we find ${\cal A}=0$ for ideal polymers at the adsorption transition point, irrespective of shapes of the obstacles, i.e. at this special point there is no polymer-mediated force between obstacles (scale-free or not).Comment: RevTeX, 10 pages, 10 figure

Coalescence Model for Crumpled Globules Formed in Polymer Collapse

The rapid collapse of a polymer, due to external forces or changes in solvent, yields a long-lived `crumpled globule.' The conjectured fractal structure shaped by hierarchical collapse dynamics has proved difficult to establish, even with large simulations. To unravel this puzzle, we study a coarse-grained model of in-falling spherical blobs that coalesce upon contact. Distances between pairs of monomers are assigned upon their initial coalescence, and do not `equilibrate' subsequently. Surprisingly, the model reproduces quantitatively the dependence of distance on segment length, suggesting that the slow approach to scaling is related to the wide distribution of blob sizes

Probability distributions for directed polymers in random media with correlated noise

The probability distribution for the free energy of directed polymers in random media (DPRM) with uncorrelated noise in $d=1+1$ dimensions satisfies the Tracy-Widom distribution. We inquire if and how this universal distribution is modified in the presence of spatially correlated noise. The width of the distribution scales as the DPRM length to an exponent $\beta$, in good (but not full) agreement with previous renormalization group and numerical results. The scaled probability is well described by the Tracy-Widom form for uncorrelated noise, but becomes symmetric with increasing correlation exponent. We thus find a class of distributions that continuously interpolates between Tracy-Widom and Gaussian forms