10,256 research outputs found
Free Energies of Isolated 5- and 7-fold Disclinations in Hexatic Membranes
We examine the shapes and energies of 5- and 7-fold disclinations in
low-temperature hexatic membranes. These defects buckle at different values of
the ratio of the bending rigidity, , to the hexatic stiffness constant,
, suggesting {\em two} distinct Kosterlitz-Thouless defect proliferation
temperatures. Seven-fold disclinations are studied in detail numerically for
arbitrary . We argue that thermal fluctuations always drive
into an ``unbuckled'' regime at long wavelengths, so that
disclinations should, in fact, proliferate at the {\em same} critical
temperature. We show analytically that both types of defects have power law
shapes with continuously variable exponents in the ``unbuckled'' regime.
Thermal fluctuations then lock in specific power laws at long wavelengths,
which we calculate for 5- and 7-fold defects at low temperatures.Comment: LaTeX format. 17 pages. To appear in Phys. Rev.
Possible effects of tilt order on phase transitions of a fixed connectivity surface model
We study the phase structure of a phantom tethered surface model shedding
light on the internal degrees of freedom (IDOF), which correspond to the
three-dimensional rod like structure of the lipid molecules. The so-called tilt
order is assumed as IDOF on the surface model. The model is defined by
combining the conventional spherical surface model and the XY model, which
describes not only the interaction between lipids but also the interaction
between the lipids and the surface. The interaction strength between IDOF and
the surface varies depending on the interaction strength between the variables
of IDOF. We know that the model without IDOF undergoes a first-order transition
of surface fluctuations and a first-order collapsing transition. We observe in
this paper that the order of the surface fluctuation transition changes from
first-order to second-order and to higher-order with increasing strength of the
interaction between IDOF variables. On the contrary, the order of collapsing
transition remains first-order and is not influenced by the presence of IDOF.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figure
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