Can one have preroughening of vicinal surfaces?
Statistical Mechanics
2009-10-31 v1 Materials Science
Abstract
We discuss the possibility that, besides roughening, a vicinal surface could display preroughening (PR), and consider the possible mechanisms for its promotion. Within the framework of a terrace-step-kink model, it turns out that a PR transition is possible, and could be induced by a short-range repulsion between parallel kinks along the same step or on adjacent steps, or even by some kind of extended range step-step repulsion. We discuss the possible relevance of this phenomenon to the anomalous roughening behaviour recently reported for Ag(115).
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/9910440,
title = {Can one have preroughening of vicinal surfaces?},
author = {S. Prestipino and E. A. Jagla and E. Tosatti},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/9910440},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
9 pages, 3 postscript figures, submitted to Surface Science