First order wetting of rough substrates and quantum unbinding

Abstract

Replica and functional renormalization group methods show that, with short-range substrate forces or in strong fluctuation regimes, wetting of a self-affine rough wall in two dimensions turns first order as soon as the wall roughness exponent exceeds the anisotropy index of hulk interface fluctuations. Different thresholds apply with long-range forces in mean held regimes. For bond-disordered bulk, fixed point stability suggests similar results, which ultimately rely on basic properties of quantum bound states with asymptotically power-law repulsive potentials