Regularity in Time for Weak Solutions of a Continuum Model for Epitaxial Growth with Elasticity on Vicinal Surfaces

The evolution equation derived by Xiang (SIAM J. Appl. Math. 63:241–258, 2002) to describe vicinal surfaces in heteroepitaxial growth is

h_t = − [H(h_x) + (h_x ⁻¹ + h_x )h_xx ]_xx , (1)

where h denotes the surface height of the film, and H is the Hilbert transform. Existence of solutions was obtained by Dal Maso, Fonseca and Leoni (Arch. Rational Mech. Anal. 212: 1037–1064, 2014). The regularity in time was left unresolved. The aim of this paper is to prove existence, uniqueness, and Lipschitz regularity in time for weak solutions, under suitable assumptions on the initial datum.