title: Approach to universal self-similar attractor for the levelling of thin liquid films.
abstract: We compare the capillary levelling of a random surface perturbation on a thin polystyrene film with a theoretical study on the two-dimensional capillary-driven thin film equation. Using atomic force microscopy, we follow the time evolution of samples prepared with different initial perturbations of the free surface. In particular, we show that the surface profiles present long term self-similarity, and furthermore, that they converge to a universal self-similar attractor that only depends on the volume of the perturbation, consistent with the theory. Finally, we look at the convergence time for the different samples and find very good agreement with the analytical predictions.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Physico-Chimie Théorique, UMR CNRS 7083 Gulliver, ESPCI ParisTech, PSL Research University, France. elie.raphael@espci.fr.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Benzaquen
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Fowler
authors.forename: Laetitia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jubin
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Salez
authors.forename: Kari
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Dalnoki-Veress
authors.forename: Elie
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Raphaël