Particles Sliding on a Fluctuating Surface: Phase Separation and Power Laws

We study a system of hard-core particles sliding downwards on a fluctuating one-dimensional surface which is characterized by a dynamical exponent $z$. In numerical simulations, an initially random particle density is found to coarsen and obey scaling with a growing length scale $\sim t^{1\mathrm{/}z}$. The structure factor deviates from the Porod law in some cases. The steady state is unusual in that the density-segregation order parameter shows strong fluctuations. The two-point correlation function has a scaling form with a cusp at small argument which we relate to a power law distribution of particle cluster sizes. Exact results on a related model of surface depths provides insight into the origin of this behaviour.