Berlin 2012 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 14: Membranes and Vesicles
BP 14.7: Talk
Wednesday, March 28, 2012, 11:30–11:45, H 1028
Critical and crossover phenomena in the phase separation of a two-component lipid membrane — Jens Ehrig1, Eugene P. Petrov1, Petra Schwille1, and •Chiu Fan Lee2 — 1Biophysics, BIOTEC, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany — 2Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany
Our recent lattice-based Monte Carlo simulations [1, 2] have shown that two-component lipid membranes are characterized by a non-trivial phase diagram and may show critical behaviour. To better understand our findings, we develop a theoretical description of the system by mapping the two-component membrane onto the Landau-Ginzburg model. This approach qualitatively reproduces the phase diagram obtained in our simulations and allows us to predict the values of the critical exponents. We compare these predictions with results of our simulations and find that, while very close to the critical temperature the system exhibits Ising universality, a crossover behaviour exhibiting non-Ising exponents takes place at higher temperatures. Experimental implications of these results will be discussed.
References: [1] J. Ehrig, E. P. Petrov, and P. Schwille, Biophys. J. 100, 80 (2011). [2] J. Ehrig, E. P. Petrov, and P. Schwille, New J. Phys. 13, 045019 (2011).