On the kinetic roughening of vicinal surfaces

Motivated by the perturbative dynamic renormalization-group analysis of Wolf [Phys. Rev. Lett. 67, 1783 (1991)], who recently examined Villain's anisotropic generalization of the noisy Burgers equation appropriate to the kinetic roughening of vicinal surfaces [J. Phys. (Paris) I 1, 19 (1991)], we have performed extensive numerical simulations of this stochastic partial differential equation in an attempt to investigate Wolf's claim of logarithmic, rather than algebraic, roughness. Our work provides direct confirmation of his dramatic predictions, complementing the evidence provided by simulations of various microscopic growth models.