Structures in fluids induced by interfaces

Abstract

There are five mechanisms which can lead to mesoscopic interfacial structures: large interfacial fluctuations, the appearance of new length scales, the divergence of the bulk correlation length, long-range forces and the presence of massless Goldstone modes. The importance of the first four mechanisms for roughening, wetting, critical adsorption, and the orientational order in dipolar fluids, respectively, is discussed.