Traveling wave profiles for a crystalline front invading liquid states: Analytical and numerical solutions

Abstract

Abstract The properties of a two dimensional crystalline phase invading a metastable or unstable liquid state are examined using the amplitude expansion formulation of the hyperbolic and parabolic phase-field crystal model. When the amplitudes are real and equal to each other, analytic expressions are derived for the profile of a steady state liquid-solid front traveling at constant velocity. Numerical simulations of the full amplitude formulation are conducted and compared with the analytic results. Close to the melting transition the analytic results for the liquid-solid profile, velocity and width are in quantitative agreement with the numerical results and disagree far from the transition.