Mesoscopic models for surface deformation

Modeling spatio-temporal pattern formation in complex systems far from thermal equilibrium has long been considered as a challenge. Fortunately, during the last decade, a unified framework, which allows the study of generic aspects of pattern formation phenomena, emerged from intensive theoretical and experimental research. It has been successfully applied in several domains, from hydrodynamics to chemistry and nonlinear optics, and, more recently, to materials instabilities. It is shown here, how the methods of nonlinear dynamics may be used to establish conditions for instability in dynamical models for surface processing. Their application to the determination of selected patterns in post-bifurcation regimes is illustrated in a dynamical description of laser-induced thin film deformation.