Ostwald ripening: The screening length revisited (Q5949024)

The authors consider the dynamics of Oswald ripening, which is relevant, for example, in the case of the binary alloy when the homogeneous state is unstable. The picture to keep in mind is that of a binary alloy consisting mostly of material in one phase, in which are embedded spherical particles of the other phase. They start with the Mullins-Sekerka model, and under the assumption that the screening length and the correlation length are of the same order, derive equations for the evolution of the mean-field function \(\overline{u}\) and the function \(\nu(t,x,r)\), the joint distribution function of particle radii and centres. The method employed is first to represent the dynamics of the Mullins-Sekerka model as the gradient flow of the surface area with respect to the \(H^{-1}\) inner product. The end result here is a Rayleigh type principle. Theorem 5.1, which is a \(\Gamma\)-convergence result in the limit as \(\epsilon\), the ratio of the inter-particle distance to the screening length, goes to zero, supplies then a variational principle.