English

Roughening of two-dimensional interfaces in nonequilibrium phase-separated systems

Soft Condensed Matter 2023-04-26 v2

Abstract

I show that non-equilibrium two-dimensional interfaces between three dimensional phase separated fluids exhibit a peculiar "sub-logarithmic" roughness. Specifically, an interface of lateral extent LL will fluctuate vertically (i.e., normal to the mean surface orientation) a typical RMS distance wh(\br,t)2[ln(L/a)]1/3w\equiv\sqrt{\langle |h(\br,t)|^2\rangle} \propto [\ln{(L/a)}]^{1/3} (where aa is a microscopic length, and h(\br,t) h(\br,t) is the height of the interface at two dimensional position \br\br at time tt). In contrast, the roughness of equilibrium two-dimensional interfaces between three dimensional fluids, obeys w[ln(L/a)]1/2w \propto [\ln{(L/a)}]^{1/2}. The exponent 1/31/3 for the active case is exact. In addition, the characteristic time scales τ(L)\tau(L) in the active case scale according to τ(L)L3[ln(L/a)]1/3\tau(L)\propto L^3 [\ln{(L/a)}]^{1/3}, in contrast to the simple τ(L)L3\tau(L)\propto L^3 scaling found in equilibrium systems with conserved densities and no fluid flow.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2211.06789,
  title  = {Roughening of two-dimensional interfaces in nonequilibrium phase-separated systems},
  author = {John Toner},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.06789},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

4 pages, no figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T05:44:27.191Z