Demonstrates the formation of bound states in steps under asymmetric kinetics, suggesting implications for surface stability.
We study time evolution of parallel straight steps with repulsive interaction between steps. If step kinetics is asymmetric in the upper and the lower terraces (Schwoebel effect), a vicinal face becomes unstable when undersaturation exceeds a critical value, and an array of large bunches described by the Benney equation appears. In the one-sided model (the extreme limit of the asymmetry) a pairing instability occurs. In this case the instability always ends up with formation of step pairs, and with large undersaturation hierarchical bound states of step pairs are formed. On the contrary many-body bound states appear in the general asymmetric model.
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Sato et al. (1997) studied this question.
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