Self-Organization on Unstable Vicinal Surfaces with Competing Interactions

Long-ranged step-step attractions destabilize the vicinal crystal surfaces. Their competition with shorter-ranged step-step repulsions results in self-organized patterns. The exponent in the time-scaling of their characteristic size is influenced only by the range of the attractions but not by the range of the repulsions as we show based on precise numerical analysis of two different minimal models. Another anisotropy we identify is that the vicinal surface is not destabilized by shorter-ranged attractions.