2002/12/05 by Riccardo Capovilla, Capovilla, Riccardo, Jemal Guven +3
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/0212118
15 pages, no figures
arxiv created 2002/12/05 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
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 for the system. In this paper, we examine the second variation of the hamiltonian about any given equilibrium, using an explicitly surface covariant geometrical approach. We identify the operator which determines the stability of equilibrium configurations.