Wolf, Dietrich; Villain, Jacques:
Shape fluctuations of crystal bars
In: Physical Review B : Condensed matter and materials physics, Vol. 41 (1990), No. 4, pp. 2434 - 2444
1990article/chapter in journal
Physics (incl. Astronomy)
Related: 1 publication(s)
Title:
Shape fluctuations of crystal bars
Author:
Wolf, DietrichUDE
GND
1273280393
LSF ID
1114
Other
connected with university
;
Villain, Jacques
Year of publication:
1990

Abstract:

In the standard theory of the equilibrium shape of a crystal {Wulff construction), thermal fluctuations are neglected. In the present work their effect is investigated in the simple case of a bar with four symmetric facets. The edges of the facets are found to undergo fluctuations with a correlation length proportional to the width 2R of the facets, which is itself proportional to the diameter of the bar. The amplitude of these fluctuations decays exponentially beyond a range proportional to R ' '. It is therefore legitimate to neglect them for large crystals. The stability of the bar is also considered: The decay into crystallites is very slow with a characteristic time increasing exponentially with R.