Thermal fluctuations and stiffening of heterogeneous fluid membranes

Abstract

We study the effects of thermal fluctuations on symmetric tensionless heterogeneous (two-component) fluid membranes in a simple minimal model. Close to the critical point $T_c$ of the associated miscibility phase transition of the composition and for sufficiently strong curvature-composition interactions, mediated through a composition-dependent bending modulus, thermal fluctuations lead to enhancement of the effective bending modulus. Thus, the membrane conformation fluctuations will be {\em suppressed} near $T_c$, in comparison with a pure fluid membrane, for which thermal fluctuations are known to reduce the effective bending modulus at all non-zero temperatures.

arXiv comment8 pages, 5 figures, accepted in Physical Review E

References in corpus (5)

• Experimental observations of dynamic critical phenomena in a lipid membrane
• Measure Factors, Tension, and Correlations of Fluid Membranes
• Two-Component Fluid Membranes Near Repulsive Walls: Linearized Hydrodynamics of Equilibrium and Non-equilibrium States
• Renormalization Group: Applications in Statistical Physics
• Phases and fluctuations in a model for asymmetric inhomogeneous fluid membranes

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Statistical mechanics of phase transitions in elastic media with vanishing thermal expansion
• Disorders can induce continuously varying universal scaling in driven systems
• Stiffening or softening of elastic media: Anomalous elasticity near phase transitions
• Phase transitions and order in two-dimensional generalized nonlinear $\sigma$-models
• Phase transitions and membrane stiffness in a class of asymmetric heterogeneous fluid membranes
• Rough or crumpled: Phases in kinetic growth with surface relaxation