J. Phys. France 51, 2129-2134 (1990)
DOI: 10.1051/jphys:0199000510190212900

Non-universal roughening of kinetic self-affine interfaces

Yi-Cheng Zhang

INFN and Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Roma, Piazzale A. Moro, 00185 Roma, Italy

Abstract
Recent experiments of wetting immiscible displacement in porous media and bacteria colony growth are considered as realizations of the Eden interfaces. I propose an explanation of the discrepancy in the scaling behavior between the experiments and the theory. Due to an instability inherent in the growth processes, the presence of unbounded non-Gaussian noise can violate the naive scaling universality.

PACS
0570L - Nonequilibrium and irreversible thermodynamics.
0540 - Fluctuation phenomena, random processes, noise, and Brownian motion.
8717 - Cellular structure and processes.

Key words
cellular biophysics -- interface phenomena -- noise -- stochastic processes