Lack of Self-affinity and Anomalous Roughening in Growth Processes

Abstract

We contrast analytical results of a variety of growth models involving subdiffusion, thermal noise and quenched disorder with simulations of these models, concluding that the assumed self-affinity property is more an exception than a rule. In our two dimensional models, self-affine surfaces may only appear when the roughness exponent is $\chi =1/2$ or $\chi =1$. A new scaling picture, which leads to more suitable ways of determining the scaling exponents, is proposed when lack of self-affinity exists.

arXiv comment4 pages in Postcript format, 2 figures included in separated compressed files, uuencoded, (submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett.)