Controlling surface morphologies by time-delayed feedback

Abstract

We propose a method to control the roughness of a growing surface via a time-delayed feedback scheme. The method is very general and can be applied to a wide range of nonequilibrium growth phenomena, from solid-state epitaxy to tumor growth. Possible experimental realizations are suggested. As an illustration, we consider the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation [Phys. Rev. Lett. 56, 889 (1986)] in 1+1 dimensions and show that the effective growth exponent of the surface width can be stabilized at any desired value in the interval [0.25, 0.33], for a significant length of time.