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Thermal fluctuations and stiffening of symmetric heterogeneous fluid membranes
Tirthankar Banerjee1, Abhik Basu1
1Condensed Matter Physics Division, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Calcutta 700064, India.
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 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 nonzero temperatures.
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