Role of fluctuations in membrane models: thermal versus non-thermal

TL;DR

This paper compares thermal and non-thermal fluctuations in membrane models, finding that non-thermal effects dominate only at large relaxation times, with implications for biological systems involving cytoskeletal fluctuations.

Contribution

It provides a quantitative analysis of the relative importance of thermal versus non-thermal fluctuations in membrane models across different dimensions.

Findings

Non-thermal fluctuations dominate at large relaxation times.

Thermal and non-thermal fluctuations compete at moderate to small relaxation times.

Results serve as benchmarks for biological membrane modeling.

Abstract

We study the comparative importance of thermal to non-thermal fluctuations for membrane-based models in the linear regime. Our results, both in 1+1 and 2+1 dimensions, suggest that non-thermal fluctuations dominate thermal ones only when the relaxation time $\tau$ is large. For moderate to small values of $\tau$, the dynamics is defined by a competition between these two forces. The results are expected to act as a quantitative benchmark for biological modelling in systems involving cytoskeletal and other non-thermal fluctuations.