A New Exponent Characterizing the Effect of Evaporation on Imbibition Experiments

Abstract

We report imbibition experiments investigating the effect of evaporation on the interface roughness and mean interface height. We observe a new exponent characterizing the scaling of the saturated surface width. Further, we argue that evaporation can be usefully modeled by introducing a gradient in the strength of the disorder, in analogy with the gradient percolation model of Sapoval {\it et~al.}. By incorporating this gradient we predict a new critical exponent and a novel scaling relation for the interface width. Both the exponent value and the form of the scaling agree with the experimental results.

12 pages, REVTeX 3.0, figures on request (accepted for PRL)

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