The thermal Casimir effect in lipid bilayer tubules - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue Physical Review E : Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics Année : 2005

The thermal Casimir effect in lipid bilayer tubules

R. R. Horgan
  • Fonction : Auteur

Résumé

We calculate the thermal Casimir effect for a dielectric tube of radius $R$ and thickness delta formed from a membrane in water. The method uses a field-theoretic approach in the grand canonical ensemble. The leading contribution to the Casimir free energy behaves as -k_BTL kappa_C/R giving rise to an attractive force which tends to contract the tube. We find that kappa_C ~ 0.3 for the case of typical lipid membrane t-tubules. We conclude that except in the case of a very soft membrane this force is insufficient to stabilize such tubes against the bending stress which tends to increase the radius.

Dates et versions

hal-00124327 , version 1 (12-01-2007)

Identifiants

Citer

David S. Dean, R. R. Horgan. The thermal Casimir effect in lipid bilayer tubules. Physical Review E : Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics, 2005, 71 (4), pp.041907. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevE.71.041907⟩. ⟨hal-00124327⟩
31 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More