Damping of Growth Oscillations in Molecular Beam Epitaxy: A Renormalization Group Approach

The conserved Sine-Gordon Equation with nonconserved shot noise is used to model homoepitaxial crystal growth. With increasing coverage the renormalized pinning potential changes from strong to weak. This is interpreted as a transition from layer-by-layer to rough growth. The associated length and time scales are identified, and found to agree with recent scaling arguments. A heuristically postulated nonlinear term $\nabla^2 (\nabla h)^2$ is created under renormalization.