Nonequilibrium wetting of finite samples

TL;DR

This paper investigates a non-equilibrium wetting transition in a Kardar-Parisi-Zhang interface model, providing numerical estimates of critical exponents and analyzing finite-size effects on wetting dynamics.

Contribution

It offers the first detailed numerical estimates of the surface critical exponent theta and explores finite-size effects in non-equilibrium wetting of finite samples.

Findings

Estimated the critical exponent theta for the wetting transition.

Analyzed the distribution of contact points over time.

Studied the finite-size effects on wetting coverage time.

Abstract

As a canonical model for wetting far from thermal equilibrium we study a Kardar-Parisi-Zhang interface growing on top of a hard-core substrate. Depending on the average growth velocity the model exhibits a non-equilibrium wetting transition which is characterized by an additional surface critical exponent theta. Simulating the single-step model in one spatial dimension we provide accurate numerical estimates for theta and investigate the distribution of contact points between the substrate and the interface as a function of time. Moreover, we study the influence of finite-size effects, in particular the time needed until a finite substrate is completely covered by the wetting layer for the first time.