FACETING VIA CORRELATED DISORDER OF A STOCHASTICALLY GROWING INTERFACE OR DOMAIN BOUNDARY

We consider a stochastically growing or evaporating interface in the p resence of disorder which is correlated in the direction normal to the interface. The growth or evaporation rate at randomly distributed dis order points is assumed to be different from that of the rest of the i nterface. This model is of relevance not only to island growth in over layers, but also to the domain growth in an ultrathin magnetic film af ter reversal of the magnetization. For a growing one-dimensional inter face or a moving domain wall in a magnetic film on a crystal surface, this type of correlated disorder simulates the effect of, e.g., surfac e steps or grain boundaries on the growth process while, for a growing or evaporating crystal surface, it describes the effect of screw disl ocations or of grain boundaries again. We show that, for interface dim ensions d = 1,2 during the growth (or evaporation) e-scale faceting de velops, although on a small scale the interface is rough. Exploiting t he formal connection between the interface model and the model used in the problem of flux line localization in a superconductor we show tha t correlated disorder localizes the flux line in the presence of point disorder.