title: Critical wetting of a class of nonequilibrium interfaces: a mean-field picture.
abstract: A self-consistent mean-field method is used to study critical wetting transitions under nonequilibrium conditions by analyzing Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) interfaces in the presence of a bounding substrate. In the case of positive KPZ nonlinearity a single (Gaussian) regime is found. On the contrary, interfaces corresponding to negative nonlinearities lead to three different regimes of critical behavior for the surface order parameter: (i) a trivial Gaussian regime, (ii) a weak-fluctuation regime with a trivially located critical point and nontrivial exponents, and (iii) a highly nontrivial strong-fluctuation regime, for which we provide a full solution by finding the zeros of parabolic-cylinder functions. These analytical results are also verified by solving numerically the self-consistent equation in each case. Analogies with and differences from equilibrium critical wetting as well as nonequilibrium complete wetting are also discussed.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Electromagnetismo y Física de la Materia, Universidad de Granada, Fuentenueva s/n, 18071 Granada, Spain.
authors.forename: Francisco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: de Los Santos
authors.forename: Elvira
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Romera
authors.forename: Omar
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Al Hammal
authors.forename: Miguel Angel
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Muñoz