The influence of encounters on domain coarsening

Journal article

We review recent progress on the derivation and analysis of higher order corrections to the classical mean-field theory of Lifshitz, Slyozov, and Wagner for domain coarsening. Most research on this subject in the applied literature has focussed on the effect of screening induced fluctuations, however some of the resulting models lack self-consistency. We discuss here recent work in which a self-consistent model for fluctuations is derived and compare it to a model that has first been suggested in the original paper by Lifshitz and Slyozov. This model takes the effect of encounters between domains into account, but has seemingly gone unnoticed in the literature. Contrary to common expectations self-similar solutions of this model predict a much larger coarsening rate than the models accounting for fluctuations. © 2010 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH and Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Authors: Niethammer, B

• Journal: ZAMM Zeitschrift fur Angewandte Mathematik und Mechanik
• Volume: 90
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 259-270
• Publication date: 2010-04-01
• DOI: 10.1002/zamm.200900384
• EISSN: 1521-4001
• ISSN: 0044-2267
• Language: English
• Keywords: Domain coarsening; Mean-field theory; Fluctuations; Higher order effects; Encounters