Ballistic deposition

Ballistic deposition is a stochastic model of surface growth in which particles stick at their first contact with a growing structure. Its local sticking rule produces rough surfaces and porous deposits.

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Random sequential adsorption: A stochastic model in which objects arrive randomly and stick irreversibly at the first nonoverlapping position. Unlike ballistic deposition, particles cannot attach above the surface by contacting a neighboring particle.
Stochastic process: A collection of random variables indexed by time or another parameter. Particle arrivals and deposition events make the model’s evolution stochastic.
Thin-film deposition: The formation of a thin solid layer by depositing material onto a substrate. Ballistic deposition idealizes how arriving material builds a film’s evolving surface.
Molecular beam epitaxy: A crystal-growth technique that deposits atoms or molecules onto a heated crystalline substrate under controlled conditions. Its emphasis on ordered, layer-by-layer growth differs from ballistic deposition’s roughening rule.
Dynamic scaling: A framework describing how statistical properties of evolving systems change with characteristic length and time scales. It organizes how roughness and lateral correlations evolve in ballistic deposition.
Kardar–Parisi–Zhang equation: A nonlinear stochastic partial differential equation describing a universality class of growing interfaces. In one dimension, ballistic deposition is a standard discrete model in this equation’s universality class.
Lattice site: A discrete position in a regular arrangement of points used to represent a system. Deposition rules act on lattice columns and their neighboring sites.
Physical vapor deposition: A family of methods that forms coatings by vaporizing material and condensing it on a substrate. Its incoming vapor particles motivate ballistic particle-arrival rules.
Random deposition model: A surface-growth model in which particles land randomly on columns without interacting with neighboring columns. Removing lateral sticking separates independent column growth from ballistic deposition’s correlated roughening.
Universality class: A collection of systems sharing the same large-scale critical behavior despite differing microscopic details. Ballistic deposition and other growth rules can share scaling exponents and long-wavelength behavior.