New exponent characterizing the effect of evaporation on imbibition experiments.

Amaral, LAN, Barabasi, AL, Buldyrev, SV, Havlin, S, Stanley, HE.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 72, 641-644 (1994)

Times cited: 33

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Abstract

We report imbibition experiments investigating the effect of evaporation on the interface roughness and mean interface height. We observe a new exponent characterizing the scaling of the saturated surface width. Further, we argue that evaporation can be usefully modeled by introducing a gradient in the strength of the disorder, in analogy with the gradient percolation model of Sapoval et al. By incorporating this gradient we predict a new critical exponent and a novel scaling relation for the interface width. Both the exponent value and the form of the scaling agree with the experimental results.