Equilibria configurations for epitaxial crystal growth with adatoms

Abstract

The behavior of a surface energy $\mathcal F(E,u)$, where $E$ is a set of finite perimeter and $u\in L^1(\partial^* E, \mathbb R_+)$ is studied. These energies have been recently considered in the context of materials science to derive a new model in crystal growth that takes into account the effect of atoms freely diffusing on the surface (called adatoms), which are responsible for morphological evolution through an attachment and detachment process. Regular critical points, existence and uniqueness of minimizers are discussed and the relaxation of $\mathcal F$ in a general setting under the $L^1$ convergence of sets and the vague convergence of measures is characterized. This is part of an ongoing project aimed at an analytical study of diffuse interface approximations of the associated evolution equations.