Biomedical subjects

Esteban Moro

Publications and source records attributed to Esteban Moro.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Single tensionless transition in the Laplacian roughening model.

We report large scale Monte Carlo simulations of the equilibrium discrete Laplacian roughening (dLr) model, originally introduced as the simplest one accommodating the hexatic phase in two-dimensional melting. The dLr model is also relevant to surface roughening in molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Our data suggest a single phase transition, possibly of the Kosterlitz-Thouless type, between a flat low-temperature phase and a rough, tensionless, high-temperature phase. Thus, earlier conclusions on the order of the phase transition and on the existence of a hexatic phase are seen as due to finite size effects, the phase diagram of the dLr model being similar to that of a continuum analog previously formulated in the context of surface growth by MBE.

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PubMed2005

Spreading of viscous fluid drops on a solid substrate assisted by thermal fluctuations.

We study the spreading of viscous drops on a solid substrate, taking into account the effects of thermal fluctuations in the fluid momentum. A nonlinear stochastic lubrication equation is derived and studied using numerical simulations and scaling analysis. We show that asymptotically spreading drops admit self-similar shapes, whose average radii can increase at rates much faster than these predicted by Tanner's law. We discuss the physical realizability of our results for thin molecular and complex fluid films, and predict that such phenomenon can in principal be observed in various flow geometries.

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PubMed2004

Numerical schemes for continuum models of reaction-diffusion systems subject to internal noise.

We present numerical schemes to integrate stochastic partial differential equations which describe the spatio-temporal dynamics of reaction-diffusion problems under the effect of internal fluctuations. The schemes conserve the non-negativity of the solutions and incorporate the Poissonian nature of internal fluctuations at small densities, their performance being limited by the level of approximation of density fluctuations at small scales. We apply the schemes to two different aspects of the Reggeon model, namely, the study of its nonequilibrium phase transition and the dynamics of fluctuating pulled fronts. In the latter case, our approach allows us to reproduce microscopic properties quantitatively within the continuum model.

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PubMed2004

Hybrid method for simulating front propagation in reaction-diffusion systems.

We study the propagation of pulled fronts in the A<--> A+A microscopic reaction-diffusion process using Monte Carlo simulations. In the mean field approximation the process is described by the deterministic Fisher-Kolmogorov-Petrovsky-Piscounov equation. In particular, we concentrate on the corrections to the deterministic behavior due to the number of particles per correlated volume Omega. By means of a hybrid simulation scheme, we manage to reach large macroscopic values of Omega, which allows us to show the importance in the dynamics of microscopic pulled fronts of the interplay of microscopic fluctuations and their macroscopic relaxation.

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PubMed2003

Emergence of pulled fronts in fermionic microscopic particle models.

We study the emergence and dynamics of pulled fronts described by the Fisher-Kolmogorov-Petrovsky-Piscounov (FKPP) equation in the microscopic reaction-diffusion process A+A<-->A on the lattice when only a particle is allowed per site. To this end we identify the parameter that controls the strength of internal fluctuations in this model, namely, the number of particles per correlated volume. When internal fluctuations are suppressed, we explictly see the matching between the deterministic FKPP description and the microscopic particle model.

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PubMed2003

Defect formation in the Swift-Hohenberg equation.

We study numerically and analytically the dynamics of defect formation during a finite-time quench of the two-dimensional Swift-Hohenberg (SH) model of Rayleigh-Bénard convection. We find that the Kibble-Zurek picture of defect formation can be applied to describe the density of defects produced during the quench. Our study reveals the relevance of two factors: the effect of local variations of the striped patterns within defect-free domains and the presence of both pointlike and extended defects. Taking into account these two aspects we are able to identify the characteristic length scale selected during the quench and to relate it to the density of defects. We discuss possible consequences of our study for the analysis of the coarsening process of the SH model.

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PubMed2002

Microscopic model for thin film spreading.

A microscopic, driven lattice gas model is proposed for the dynamics and spatiotemporal fluctuations of the precursor film observed in spreading experiments. Matter is transported both by holes and particles, and the distribution of each can be described by driven diffusion with a moving boundary. This picture leads to a stochastic partial differential equation for the shape of the boundary. Explicit analytic results are obtained which agree with the simulations of the lattice gas.

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PubMed2001

Dynamic renormalization group study of a generalized continuum model of crystalline surfaces.

We apply the Nozières-Gallet dynamic renormalization group (RG) scheme to a continuum equilibrium model of a d-dimensional surface relaxing by linear surface tension and linear surface diffusion, and which is subject to a lattice potential favoring discrete values of the height variable. The model thus interpolates between the overdamped sine-Gordon model and a related continuum model of crystalline tensionless surfaces. The RG flow predicts the existence of an equilibrium roughening transition only for d=2 dimensional surfaces, between a flat low-temperature phase and a rough high-temperature phase in the Edwards-Wilkinson (EW) universality class. The surface is always in the flat phase for any other substrate dimensions d>2. For any value of d, the linear surface diffusion mechanism is an irrelevant perturbation of the linear surface tension mechanism, but may induce long crossovers within which the scaling properties of the linear molecular-beam epitaxy equation are observed, thus increasing the value of the sine-Gordon roughening temperature. This phenomenon originates in the nonlinear lattice potential, and is seen to occur even in the absence of a bare surface tension term. An important consequence of this is that a crystalline tensionless surface is asymptotically described at high temperatures by the EW universality class.

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