Chiral edge fluctuations of colloidal membranes

TL;DR

This paper investigates how chirality influences edge fluctuations in colloidal membranes, combining experiments and theory to reveal a peak in fluctuation spectrum caused by chirality-induced coupling.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical model that accounts for liquid crystalline degrees of freedom to explain chirality effects on edge fluctuations in colloidal membranes.

Findings

Chirality causes a peak in the in-plane edge fluctuation spectrum.

The theoretical model accurately matches experimental data.

Chirality couples in-plane and out-of-plane fluctuations.

Abstract

We study edge fluctuations of a flat colloidal membrane comprised of a monolayer of aligned filamentous viruses. Experiments reveal that a peak in the spectrum of the in-plane edge fluctuations arises for sufficiently strong virus chirality. Accounting for internal liquid crystalline degrees of freedom by the length, curvature, and geodesic torsion of the edge, we calculate the spectrum of the edge fluctuations. The theory quantitatively describes the experimental data, demonstrating that chirality couples in-plane and out-of-plane edge fluctuations to produce the peak.