Self-organization of stressed surfaces: The role of local relaxations

We investigate, in a very simple form and using a continuum approach, the influence of the Frenkel-Kontorova mechanism on the self-organization of stressed chemisorbed layers on an anisotropic surface. The long-range substrate-mediated interactions are still the driving force for self-organization but short-range relaxations of the adsorbate domains play an important role. When the adsorbate film includes dislocations at high coverage, special values of the adsorbate domain size are favored. Surprisingly, short-range relaxations are still important for registered adsorbate films leading to modifications of Marchenko predictions.