Toroidal membrane vesicles in spherical confinement

Abstract

We investigate the morphology of a toroidal fluid membrane vesicle confined inside a spherical container. The equilibrium shapes are assembled in a geometrical phase diagram as a function of scaled area and reduced volume of the membrane. For small area the vesicle can adopt its free form. When increasing the area, the membrane cannot avoid contact and touches the confining sphere along a circular contact line, which extends to a zone of contact for higher area. The elastic energies of the equilibrium shapes are compared to those of their confined counterparts of spherical topology to predict under which conditions a topology change is favored energetically.

16 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Viscous regularization and r-adaptive remeshing for finite element analysis of lipid membrane mechanics
• Laplace pressure as a surface stress in fluid vesicles
• Shape transformations of toroidal vesicles
• Axially symmetric membranes with polar tethers
• Force dipoles and stable local defects on fluid vesicles
• Confining spheres within hyperspheres

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Construction of nuclear envelope shape by a high-genus vesicle with pore-size constraint
• Shape transitions of high-genus fluid vesicles
• Equatorial deformation of homogeneous spherical fluid vesicles by a rigid ring
• Flexoelectric fluid membrane vesicles in spherical confinement