Shear Melting at the Crystal-Liquid Interface: Erosion and the Asymmetric Suppression of Interface Fluctuations

The influence of an applied shear on the planar crystal-melt interface is modelled by a nonlinear stochastic partial differential equation of the interface fluctuations. A feature of this theory is the asymmetric destruction of interface fluctuations due to advection of the crystal protrusions on the liquid side of the interface only. We show that this model is able to qualitatively reproduce the nonequilibrium coexistence line found in simulations. The impact of shear on spherical clusters is also addressed.