Interface roughening in nonequilibrium phase-separated systems

Abstract

Interfaces of phase-separated systems roughen in time due to capillary waves. Because of fluxes in the bulk, their dynamics is nonlocal in real space and is not described by the Edwards-Wilkinson or Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equations, nor their conserved counterparts. We show that in the absence of detailed balance, the phase-separated interface is described by a new universality class that we term |q|KPZ. We compute the associated critical exponents via one-loop renormalization group, and corroborate the results by numerical integration of the |q|KPZ equation. Deriving the effective interface dynamics from a minimal field theory of active phase separation, we finally argue that the |q|KPZ universality class generically describes liquid-vapor interfaces in active systems.

6 pages, 3 figures, 1 supplemental

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• Hyperuniform interfaces in non-equilibrium phase coexistence
• Interface dynamics of wet active systems
• Logarithmic or algebraic: roughening of an active Kardar-Parisi-Zhang surface
• Modeling growing confluent tissues using a lattice Boltzmann method: interface stability and fluctuations
• Scale-dependent sharpening of interfacial fluctuations in shape-based models of dense cellular sheets
• Conservation laws and slow dynamics determine the universality class of interfaces in active matter
• Shape-specific fluctuations of an active colloidal interface
• Active Cahn-Hilliard theory for nonequilibrium phase separation: quantitative macroscopic predictions and a microscopic derivation
• Hyperuniformity in active fluids reshapes nucleation and capillary-wave dynamics