Role of fluctuations in membrane models: thermal versus non-thermal

We study the comparative importance of thermal to non-thermal fluctuations for membrane-based models in the linear regime. Our results, both in 1+1 and 2+1 dimensions, suggest that non-thermal fluctuations dominate thermal ones only when the relaxation time $\tau$ is large. For moderate to small values of $\tau$, the dynamics is defined by a competition between these two forces. The results are expected to act as a quantitative benchmark for biological modelling in systems involving cytoskeletal and other non-thermal fluctuations.