GROWTH OF ROUGH SURFACES

The growth of objects with rough surfaces is a common phenomenon. We describe several models used in the study of the temporal evolution of fluctuating interfaces and then we explain the dynamical scaling in this class of growth models with self-affine surfaces. The recent progress in this field is reviewed. Much emphasis is put on roughness properties and in particular on a possible kinetic roughening transition - a nonequilibrium analog of the thermal roughening transition. Both analytical and numerical results for scaling exponents are summarized and indications of a phase transition in some models are discussed.