J. Heinonen et al., SIMPLE-MODEL FOR ANISOTROPIC STEP-GROWTH, Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics, 57(6), 1998, pp. 6851-6858
We consider a simple model for the growth of isolated steps on a vicin
al crystal surface. It incorporates diffusion and drift of adatoms on
the terrace, and strong step and kink edge barriers. Using a combinati
on of analytic methods and Monte Carlo simulations, we study the morph
ology of growing steps in detail. In particular, under typical molecul
ar beam epitaxy conditions the step morphology is linearly unstable in
the model and develops fingers separated by deep cracks. The vertical
roughness of the step:grows linearly in time, while horizontally the
fingers coarsen proportional to t(0.33). We develop scaling arguments
to study the saturation of the ledge morphology for a finite width and
length of the terrace.