It has recently been proposed that fluctuating “pulled” fronts propagating into an unstable state should not be in the standard Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) universality class for rough interface growth. We introduce an effective field equation for this class of problems, and show on the basis of it that noisy pulled fronts in $d+1\mathrm{}$ bulk dimensions should be in the universality class of the $\left(\right(d+1\mathrm{})+1\mathrm{})\mathrm{D}$ KPZ equation rather than of the $(d+1\mathrm{})\mathrm{D}$ KPZ equation. Our scenario ties together a number of heretofore unexplained observations in the literature, and is supported by previous numerical results.

• Received 14 February 2001

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.86.5215