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Updated: Aug 7, 2026

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
Published on: March 3, 2017
Coiling instabilities of multilamellar tubes
1Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA. santa@mrl.ucsb.edu
Abstract:
Myelin figures are densely packed stacks of coaxial cylindrical bilayers that are unstable to the formation of coils or double helices. These myelin figures appear to have no intrinsic chirality. We show that such cylindrical membrane stacks can develop an instability when they acquire a spontaneous curvature or when the equilibrium distance between membranes is decreased. This instability breaks the chiral symmetry of the stack and may result in coiling. A unilamellar cylindrical vesicle, on the other hand, will develop an axisymmetric instability, possibly related to the pearling instability.
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