Shear Melting at the Crystal-Liquid Interface: Erosion and the Asymmetric Suppression of Interface Fluctuations

TL;DR

This paper models how shear affects crystal-liquid interfaces, revealing asymmetric fluctuation suppression and matching simulation results, with implications for understanding nonequilibrium phase coexistence.

Contribution

It introduces a nonlinear stochastic PDE model capturing asymmetric interface fluctuation suppression under shear, aligning with simulation observations.

Findings

Asymmetric destruction of interface fluctuations due to shear.

Qualitative reproduction of nonequilibrium coexistence line.

Impact of shear on spherical cluster stability.

Abstract

The influence of an applied shear on the planar crystal-melt interface is modelled by a nonlinear stochastic partial differential equation of the interface fluctuations. A feature of this theory is the asymmetric destruction of interface fluctuations due to advection of the crystal protrusions on the liquid side of the interface only. We show that this model is able to qualitatively reproduce the nonequilibrium coexistence line found in simulations. The impact of shear on spherical clusters is also addressed.