On the fluctuations of jamming coverage upon random sequential adsorption on homogeneous and heterogeneous media

Abstract

The fluctuations of the jamming coverage upon Random Sequential Adsorption (RSA) are studied using both analytical and numerical techniques. Our main result shows that these fluctuations (characterized by $σ_{θ_J}$) decay with the lattice size according to the power-law $σ_{θ_J} \propto L^{-1/ ν}$. The exponent $ν$ depends on the dimensionality $D$ of the substrate and the fractal dimension of the set where the RSA process actually takes place ($d_f$) according to $ν= 2 / (2D - d_f)$.This theoretical result is confirmed by means of extensive numerical simulations applied to the RSA of dimers on homogeneous and stochastic fractal substrates. Furthermore, our predictions are in excellent agreement with different previous numerical results. It is also shown that, studying correlated stochastic processes, one can define various fluctuating quantities designed to capture either the underlying physics of individual processes or that of the whole system. So, subtle differences in the definitions may lead to dramatically different physical interpretations of the results. Here, this statement is demonstrated for the case of RSA of dimers on binary alloys.