Anomaly in Numerical Integrations of the KPZ Equation and Improved Discretization

We demonstrate and explain that conventional finite difference schemes for direct numerical integration do not approximate the continuum Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation due to microscopic roughness. The effective diffusion coefficient is found to be inconsistent with the nominal one. We propose a novel discretization in 1+1 dimensions which does not suffer from this deficiency and elucidates the reliability and limitations of direct integration approaches.