Instruct: Identify the main and secondary category of Arxiv papers based on the titles and abstracts
Query: Breakdown of metastable step-flow growth on vicinal surfaces induced by
  nucleation   We consider the growth of a vicinal crystal surface in the presence of a
step-edge barrier. For any value of the barrier strength, measured by the
length l_es, nucleation of islands on terraces is always able to destroy
asymptotically step-flow growth. The breakdown of the metastable step-flow
occurs through the formation of a mound of critical width proportional to
L_c=1/sqrt(l_es), the length associated to the linear instability of a
high-symmetry surface. The time required for the destabilization grows
exponentially with L_c. Thermal detachment from steps or islands, or a steeper
slope increase the instability time but do not modify the above picture, nor
change L_c significantly. Standard continuum theories cannot be used to
evaluate the activation energy of the critical mound and the instability time.
The dynamics of a mound can be described as a one dimensional random walk for
its height k: attaining the critical height (i.e. the critical size) means that
the probability to grow (k->k+1) becomes larger than the probability for the
mound to shrink (k->k-1). Thermal detachment induces correlations in the random
walk, otherwise absent.

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The categories of this paper are: acc-phys
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The categories of this paper are: alg-geom
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The categories of this paper are: adap-org
0
The categories of this paper are: hep-ph
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The categories of this paper are: hep-lat
7
The categories of this paper are: hep-th
17
The categories of this paper are: q-fin
18
The categories of this paper are: econ
32
The categories of this paper are: atom-ph
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The categories of this paper are: stat
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The categories of this paper are: math-ph
10
The categories of this paper are: q-bio
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The categories of this paper are: supr-con
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The categories of this paper are: eess
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The categories of this paper are: bayes-an
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The categories of this paper are: ao-sci