Dynamics of particle deposition on a disordered substrate. I. Near-equilibrium behavior.

A growth model which describes the deposition of particles (or the growth of a rigid crystal) on a disordered substrate is investigated. The dynamic renormalization group is applied to the stochastic growth equation using the Martin, Sigga, and Rose formalism. The periodic potential and the quenched disorder, upon averaging, are combined into a single term in the generating functional. Changing the temperature (or the inherent noise of the deposition process) two different regimes with a transition between them at Tsr, are found: for T > Tsr this term is irrelevant and the surface has the scaling properties of a surface growing on a flat substrate in the rough phase. The height-height correlations behave as C(L, τ) ∼ ln[Lf(τ/L2)]. While the linear response mobility is finite in this phase it does vanish as (T − Tsr) when T → T+ sr. For T < Tsr †Present address: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadephia, PA 19104-6396