First-order phase transition of triangulated surfaces on a spherical core

Abstract

We study an intrinsic curvature model defined on fixed-connectivity triangulated lattices enclosing a spherical core by using the canonical Monte Carlo simulation technique. We find that the model undergoes a discontinuous transition of shape transformation between the smooth state and a collapsed state even when the core radius $R$ is sufficiently large; the transition depends on $R$. The origin of the multitude of transitions is considered to be a degeneracy of the collapsed states. We also find that the Gaussian bond potential $S_1/N$, which is the sum of bond length squares, discontinuously changes at the transition. The discontinuity in $S_1/N$ implies a possibility of large fluctuations of the distance between lipids, or the density of lipids, in biological membranes such as giant vesicles or liposomes enclosing some materials.

10 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Crumpling transition and flat phase of polymerized phantom membranes
• Crumpled-to-tubule transition in anisotropic polymerized membranes: beyond epsilon-expansion
• Monte Carlo studies of triangulated spherical surfaces in the two-dimensional space
• Non-trivial effect of the in-plane shear elasticity on the phase transitions of fixed-connectivity meshwork models

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Dependence of the surface tension on the shape of surface boundary