FIRST-ORDER WETTING OF ROUGH SUBSTRATES AND QUANTUM UNBINDING

Replica and functional renormalization group methods show that, with s hort-range substrate forces or in strong fluctuation regimes, wetting of a self-affine rough wall in two dimensions turns first order as soo n as the wall roughness exponent exceeds the anisotropy index of hulk interface fluctuations. Different thresholds apply with long-range for ces in mean held regimes. For bond-disordered bulk, fixed point stabil ity suggests similar results, which ultimately rely on basic propertie s of quantum bound states with asymptotically power-law repulsive pote ntials.