Does the Quenched Kardar-Parisi-Zhang Equation Describe the Directed Percolation Depinning Models?

Abstract

The roughening of interfaces moving in inhomogeneous media is investigated by numerical integration of the phenomenological stochastic differential equation proposed by Kardar, Parisi, and Zhang [Phys. Rev. Lett. 56, 889, (1986)] with quenched noise (QKPZ). We express the evolution equations for the mean height and the roughness into two contributions: the local and the lateral one. We compare this two contributions with the ones obtained for two directed percolation deppining models (DPD): the Tang and Leschhorn model [Phys. Rev A 45, R8309 (1992)] and the Buldyrev et al. model [Phys. Rev. A 45, R8313 (1992)] by Braunstein al. [J. Phys. A 32, 1801 (1999); Phys. Rev. E 59, 4243 (1999)]. Even these models have being classified in the same universality class that the QKPZ the contributions to the growing mechanisms are quite different. The lateral contribution in the DPD models, leads to an increasing of the roughness near the criticality while in the QKPZ equation this contribution always flattens the roughness. These results suggest that the QKPZ equation does not describe properly the DPD models even when the exponents derived from this equation are similar to the one obtained from simulations of these models.