Anomalous fluctuations in surface growth

Abstract

The authors have studied fluctuations in the steady state of a modified ballistic deposition model. The ensemble fluctuations of the surface width averaged over a time sequence, which involves temporal correlations, exhibit a peak around the previously proposed phase transition point in both 2+1 and 3+1 dimensions. They show that the time series of a finite system is self-averaging and the anomaly is in the fluctuations of the temporal correlations. They discuss the implications of their results in 2+1 dimensions for the structure of the renormalization group flows.