Effects of step-step interactions on the fluctuations of an individual step on a vicinal surface and its wavelength dependence

We relate properties of an anisotropic continuum model of a two-dimensional vicinal surface to those of a model with fluctuating and interacting steps , We show that analysis of the fluctuations of an individual step in the ar ray provides information about the length scale on which the surface has re ached equilibrium and can be used to estimate fundamental step parameters f rom locally equilibrated surfaces. Monte Carlo simulations of a stable vici nal surface using the terrace-step-kink model agree with the theoretical pr edictions. We further apply this analysis to steps on an unstable surface d uring reconstruction-induced faceting and show that it can be used to deter mine whether the faceting process is in the nucleation or spinodal decompos ition regime. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.