Tuesday, November 6, 2012

1211.0880 (Brian Seguin et al.)

Statistical-mechanical derivation of the Canham--Helfrich free-energy
density
   [PDF]

Brian Seguin, Eliot Fried
The Canham--Helfrich free-energy density for a lipid bilayer has drawn considerable attention. Aside from the mean and Gaussian curvatures, this free-energy density involves a spontaneous mean-curvature that encompasses information regarding the preferred, natural shape of the lipid bilayer. We use a straightforward statistical-mechanical argument to derive the Canham--Helfrich free-energy density. Our derivation (i) provides a justification for the common assertion that spontaneous curvature originates primarily from asymmetry between the leaflets comprising a bilayer and (ii) furnishes expressions for the splay and saddle-splay moduli in terms of derivatives of the underlying potential.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.0880

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