Related papers: An Analysis on the Shape Equation for Biconcave Ax…
Motivated by recent studies of two-phase lipid vesicles possessing 2D solid domains integrated within a fluid bilayer phase, we study the shape equilibria of closed vesicles possessing a single planar, circular inclusion. While 2D solid…
The steady motion and deformation of a lipid-bilayer vesicle translating through a circular tube in low Reynolds number pressure-driven flow are investigated numerically using an axisymmetric boundary element method. This fluid-structure…
Coarse-grained continuous descriptions for lipid bilayers are typically based on minimizing the Helfrich energy. Such models consider the fluid properties of these structures only implicitly and have been shown to nicely reproduce…
In this survey article, we present two applications of surface curvatures in theoretical physics. The first application arises from biophysics in the study of the shape of cell vesicles involving the minimization of a mean curvature type…
We consider the impact of surface hydrodynamics on the interplay between curvature and composition in coarsening processes on model systems for biomembranes. This includes scaling laws and equilibrium configurations, which are investigated…
Motivated by recent experimental work on multicomponent lipid membranes supported by colloidal scaffolds, we report an exhaustive theoretical investigation of the equilibrium configurations of binary mixtures on curved substrates. Starting…
We theoretically study the elastic deformation of a fluid membrane induced by an adhering spherical colloidal particle within the framework of a Helfrich energy. Based on a full optimization of the membrane shape we find a continuous…
Correctly formulated continuum models for lipid-bilayer membranes present a significant challenge to computational mechanics. In particular, the mid-surface behavior is that of a 2-dimensional fluid, while the membrane resists bending much…
The paper studies the equilibrium configurations of inextensible elastic membranes exhibiting lateral fluidity. Using a continuum description of the membrane's motions based on the surface Navier--Stokes equations with bending forces, the…
Liquid crystals with molecules constrained to the tangent bundle of a curved surface show interesting phenomena resulting from the tight coupling of the elastic and bulk free energies of the liquid crystal with geometric properties of the…
Consider a closed lipid membrane (vesicle), modeled as a two-dimensional surface, described by a geometrical hamiltonian that depends on its extrinsic curvature. The vanishing of its first variation determines the equilibrium configurations…
Motivated by recent experiments on bilayer polyhedra composed of amphiphilic molecules, we study the elastic bending energies of bilayer vesicles forming polyhedral shapes. Allowing for segregation of excess amphiphiles along the ridges of…
By means of Surface Evolver (Exp. Math,1,141 1992), a software package of brute-force energy minimization over a triangulated surface developed by the geometry center of University of Minnesota, we have numerically searched the…
The purpose of this paper is to study the shapes and stabilities of bio-membranes within the framework of exterior differential forms. After a brief review of the current status in theoretical and experimental studies on the shapes of…
We investigate the equilibrium configurations of closed planar elastic curves of fixed length, whose stiffness, also known as the bending rigidity, depends on an additional density variable. The underlying variational model relies on the…
Vesicles are important surrogate structures made up of multiple phospholipids and cholesterol distributed in the form of a lipid bilayer. Tubular vesicles can undergo pearling i.e., formation of beads on the liquid thread akin to the…
This review reports some key results in theoretical investigations on configurations of lipid membranes and presents several challenges in this field which involve (i) exact solutions to the shape equation of lipid vesicles; (ii) exact…
Lipid bilayer membranes are commonly modeled as area-preserving fluid surfaces that resist bending. There appear to be two schools of thought in the literature concerning the actual area constraint. In some works the total or global area…
The morphology of spherically confined flexoelectric fluid membrane vesicles in an external uniform electric field is studied numerically. Due to the deformations induced by the confinement, the membrane becomes polarized resulting in an…
Within the framework of the Helfrich elastic theory of membranes and of differential geometry we study the possible instabilities of spherical vesicles towards double bubbles. We find that not only temperature, but also magnetic fields can…