1,553 research outputs found
Are stress-free membranes really 'tensionless'?
In recent years it has been argued that the tension parameter driving the
fluctuations of fluid membranes, differs from the imposed lateral stress, the
'frame tension'. In particular, stress-free membranes were predicted to have a
residual fluctuation tension. In the present paper, this argument is
reconsidered and shown to be inherently inconsistent -- in the sense that a
linearized theory, the Monge model, is used to predict a nonlinear effect.
Furthermore, numerical simulations of one-dimensional stiff membranes are
presented which clearly demonstrate, first, that the internal 'intrinsic'
stress in membranes indeed differs from the frame tension as conjectured, but
second, that the fluctuations are nevertheless driven by the frame tension.
With this assumption, the predictions of the Monge model agree excellently with
the simulation data for stiffness and tension values spanning several orders of
magnitude
Membrane fluctuations near a plane rigid surface
We use analytical calculations and Monte Carlo simulations to determine the
thermal fluctuation spectrum of a membrane patch of a few tens of nanometer in
size, whose corners are located at a fixed distance above a plane rigid
surface. Our analysis shows that the surface influence on the bilayer
fluctuations can be effectively described in terms of a uniform confining
potential that grows quadratically with the height of the membrane relative
to the surface: . The strength of the harmonic
confining potential vanishes when the corners of the membrane patch are placed
directly on the surface (), and achieves its maximum value when is of
the order of a few nanometers. However, even at maximum strength the
confinement effect is quite small and has noticeable impact only on the
amplitude of the largest bending mode.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Fluctuation induced interactions between domains in membranes
We study a model lipid bilayer composed of a mixture of two incompatible
lipid types which have a natural tendency to segregate in the absence of
membrane fluctuations. The membrane is mechanically characterized by a local
bending rigidity which varies with the average local lipid
composition . We show, in the case where varies weakly with
, that the effective interaction between lipids of the same type can
either be everywhere attractive or can have a repulsive component at
intermediate distances greater than the typical lipid size. When this
interaction has a repulsive component, it can prevent macro-phase separation
and lead to separation in mesophases with a finite domain size. This effect
could be relevant to certain experimental and numerical observations of
mesoscopic domains in such systems.Comment: 9 pages RevTex, 1 eps figur
Compression modulus of macroscopic fiber bundles
We study dense, disordered stacks of elastic macroscopic fibers. These stacks
often exhibit non-linear elasticity, due to the coupling between the applied
stress and the internal distribution of fiber contacts. We propose a
theoretical model for the compression modulus of such systems, and illustrate
our method by studying the conical shapes frequently observed at the
extremities of ropes and other fiber structures. studying the conical shapes
frequently observed at theextremities of ropes and other fiber structures
Fluctuation-induced forces between inclusions in a fluid membrane under tension
We discuss the fluctuation-induced force, a finite-temperature analog of the
Casimir force, between two inclusions embedded in a fluid membrane under
tension. We suggest a method to calculate this Casimir interaction in the most
general case, where membrane fluctuations are governed by the combined action
of surface tension, bending modulus, and the Gaussian rigidity. We find that
the surface tension strongly modifies the power law in the separation
dependence of the Casimir interaction. This results in a strong suppression of
the Casimir force at separations beyond a characteristic length, which could
affect protein aggregation dynamics in cell membranes.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur
Spherical Vesicles Distorted by a Grafted Latex Bead: An Exact Solution
We present an exact solution to the problem of the global shape description
of a spherical vesicle distorted by a grafted latex bead. This solution is
derived by treating the nonlinearity in bending elasticity through the
(topological) Bogomol'nyi decomposition technique and elastic compatibility. We
recover the ``hat-model'' approximation in the limit of a small latex bead and
find that the region antipodal to the grafted latex bead flattens. We also
derive the appropriate shape equation using the variational principle and
relevant constraints.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, LaTeX2e+REVTeX+AmSLaTe
Synthetic Aperture Radar observations of resonantly generated internal solitary waves at Race Point Channel (Cape Cod)
Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2008. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 113 (2008): C11016, doi:10.1029/2008JC005004.Synthetic Aperture Radar images revealed the two-dimensional propagation characteristics of short-period internal solitary waves in Race Point Channel in Massachusetts Bay. The images and in situ measurements of the flow in the channel are used to infer the likely generation mechanism of the waves. The solitary waves are generated during the ebb phase of the tide within the channel. On some occasions, two trains of internal waves are generated presumably at the same location but at slightly different phases of the ebb tide. The main characteristics of the (two-layer) flow are described based on the criticality of the Froude number. It is suggested that these two individual packets of waves result from flow passage through resonance (where the Froude number is one). One packet is generated as the flow passes through the transcritical regime during the acceleration phase of the (ebb) tidal current, and another packet is generated during the deceleration phase. Both packets propagate upstream when the tide slacks, but with slightly different propagation directions.J. C. B. da Silva is grateful to
FCT for sabbatical leave support (BSAB/610/2006) and the Calouste
Gulbenkian Foundation for partial support. J. C. B. da Silva was supported
by FCT projects ‘‘SPOTIWAVE-II’’ (project code POCI/MAR/57836/2004)
and ‘‘AMAZING’’ (project code PDCTE/CTA/49953/2003). K. R. Helfrich
was supported by ONR grant N000140610798. This research was partially supported
by the Woods Hole Sea Grant Program (2008– 2010 cycle), under a grant
from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),
U.S. Department of Commerce, Grant No. NA06OAR4170021, project
number R/O-40
Saddle-splay modulus of a particle-laden fluid interface
The scaled-particle theory equation of state for the two-dimensional
hard-disk fluid on a curved surface is proposed and used to determine the
saddle-splay modulus of a particle-laden fluid interface. The resulting
contribution to saddle-splay modulus, which is caused by thermal motion of the
adsorbed particles, is comparable in magnitude with the saddle-splay modulus of
a simple fluid interface.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure
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