Roughening transition and universality of single step growth models in (2+1)-dimensions

Abstract: We study (2+1)-dimensional single step model (SSM) for crystal growth including both deposition and evaporation processes parametrized by a single control parameter $p$. Using extensive numerical simulations with a relatively high statistics, we estimate various interface exponents such as roughness, growth and dynamic exponents as well as various geometric and distribution exponents of height clusters and their boundaries (or iso-height lines) as function of $p$. We find that, in contrary to the general belief, there exists a critical value $p_c\approx 0.25$ at which the model undergoes a roughening transition from a rough phase with $p<p_c$ in the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) universality to a smooth phase with $p>p_c$, asymptotically in the Edwards-Wilkinson (EW) class. We validate our conclusion by estimating the effective roughness exponents and their extrapolation to the infinite-size limit.