Renormalization-group theory for the phase-field crystal equation

Abstract

We derive a set of rotationally covariant amplitude equations for use in multiscale simulation of the two-dimensional phase-field crystal model by a variety of renormalization-group (RG) methods. We show that the presence of a conservation law introduces an ambiguity in operator ordering in the RG procedure, which we show how to resolve. We compare our analysis with standard multiple-scale techniques, where identical results can be obtained with greater labor, by going to sixth order in perturbation theory, and by assuming the correct scaling of space and time.