Surface Melting and Roughening Transition

We present a short review of recent experimental and computer simulation results on surface roughening and surface initiated melting. These phenomena appear to be completely different although mutual interactions, not yet identified, can exist. The critical examination of various experimental results indicates that locating the start of surface melting at temperatures well below the melting point results from interpretations which should be considered cautiously. To clarify this point more precise experiments are needed. We show that a combination of computer simulations and experiments is the more efficient approach for the investigation of both the mechanisms of surface roughening at the atomic scale and the relationship between surface roughening and surface melting.