Nonequilibrium phase transition in surface growth

Conserved growth models that exhibit a nonlinear instability in which the height (depth) of isolated pillars (grooves) grows in time are studied by numerical integration and stochastic simulation. When this instability is controlled by the introduction of an infinite series of higher-order nonlinear terms, these models exhibit, as function of a control parameter, a non-equilibrium phase transition between a kinetically rough phase with self-affine scaling and a phase that exhibits mound formation, slope selection and power-law coarsening.