On a Higher Order Convective Cahn-Hilliard-Type Equation

A convective Cahn-Hilliard type equation of sixth order that describes the faceting of a growing surface is considered with periodic boundary conditions. By using a Galerkin approach the existence of weak solutions to this sixth order partial differential equation is established in L2(0, T ; Ḣ3 per). Furthermore stronger regularity results have been derived and these are used to prove uniqueness of the solutions. Additionally a numerical study shows that solutions behave similarly as for the better known convective Cahn-Hilliard equation. The transition from coarsening to roughening is analyzed, indicating that the characteristic length scale decreases logarithmically with increasing deposition rate.