Hamburg 2001 – scientific programme

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SYWS: Simulation von Wachstum und Strukturbildung

SYWS 2: Fachsitzung II

SYWS 2.4: Fachvortrag

Thursday, March 29, 2001, 18:00–18:15, S12

Meandering instability of steps on a vicinal surface during MBE — •Jouni Kallunki and Joachim Krug — Fachbereich Physik, Universität GH Essen, 45117 Essen

During growth straight steps on a vicinal surface are unstable against collective meandering, as was shown by Bales and Zangwill in 1990 [1]. This leads to a formation of a wavy pattern with a characteristic wavelenght on the surface. The meandering instability has been observed in several experiments and simulations. However, recent quantitative measurements of the meander wavelength showed a discrepancy between theory and experiments [2].

Recently an equation describing the evolution of array of in-phase steps has been derived from the BCF-theory [3], which makes it possible to follow the evolution of the steps in the non-linear regime and thus investigate the persistence of the initial wavelength. Results of this approach [3], as well as results from Monte-Carlo simulations of the Solid-on-Solid model are presented. Comparison between the two approaches and the experiments is made.

[1] G. S. Bales and A. Zangwill, Phys. Rev. B, 41, 5500 (1990)
[2] T. Maroutian, L. Duillard and H.-J.Ernst, Phys. Rev. Lett., 83, 4353 (1999)
[3] J. Kallunki and J. Krug, Phys. Rev. E, 62, 6229 (2000)