Scaling of rough surfaces: effects of surface diffusion

Abstract

Surface properties of a random deposition model in which the effects of surface diffusion are taken into account is studied in two dimensions. It is found that although the deposition bulk and the surface mass do not have fractal properties, the width of the surface is a self-affine fractal exhibiting non-trivial scaling with the surface height and the system size. The scaling results are found to agree with the scaling form proposed by Family and Vicsek (1985) for the ballistic deposition model, but with different exponents. This implies that random deposition with surface diffusion is in a different universality class from ballistic deposition and the simple random filling process.