Anisotropic phase field equations of arbitrary order (Q631293)

A set of higher order phase equations are derived by using a microscopic interaction Hamiltonian with detailed anisotropy in the interactions of the form \[ a_0+\delta \sum_{n=1}^N\big\{ a_n\cos (2n\theta )+b_n\sin (2n\theta )\big\}, \] where \(\theta \) is the angle with respect to a fixed axis, and \(\delta \) is a parameter. The Hamiltonian is expanded using complex Fourier series and leads to a free energy and phase field equations with arbitrarily high order derivatives in the spatial variable. In order to obtain the interfacial conditions, a formal asymptotic analysis is performed on these phase field equation in terms of the interface thickness.