Width scaling of an interface constrained by a membrane
Abstract
We investigate the shape of a growing interface in the presence of an impenetrable moving membrane. The two distinct geometrical arrangements of the interface and membrane, obtained by placing the membrane behind or ahead of the interface, are not symmetrically related. On the basis of numerical results and an exact calculation, we argue that these two arrangements represent two distinct universality classes for interfacial growth: whilst the well-established Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) growth is obtained in the `ahead' arrangement, we find an arrested KPZ growth with a smaller roughness exponent in the `behind' arrangement. This suggests that the surface properties of growing cell membranes and expanding bacterial colonies, for example, are fundamentally distinct.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1805.03536,
title = {Width scaling of an interface constrained by a membrane},
author = {J. Whitehouse and R. A. Blythe and M. R. Evans and D. Mukamel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1805.03536},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
6 pages, 6 figures; revised version contains a small amount of additional discussion and the supplementary figures. To appear in Phys. Rev. Lett