New set of measures to analyze non-equilibrium structures

Abstract

We introduce a set of statistical measures that can be used to quantify non-equilibrium surface growth. They are used to deduce new information about spatiotemporal dynamics of model systems for spinodal decomposition and surface deposition. Patterns growth in the Cahn-Hilliard Equation (used to model spinodal decomposition) are shown to exhibit three distinct stages. Two models of surface growth, namely the continuous Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) model and the discrete Restricted-Solid-On-Solid (RSOS) model are shown to have different saturation exponents.