Anisotropic and Heterogeneous Polymerized Membranes

TL;DR

This paper explores how anisotropy and heterogeneity in polymerized membranes induce new phases and universal anomalous elasticity, revealing complex behaviors driven by fluctuations and disorder.

Contribution

It introduces the effects of infinitesimal anisotropy and heterogeneity on membrane phases, including the tubule phase and conformational glassy states, with a focus on universal elasticity.

Findings

Anisotropy induces a tubule phase between crumpled and flat phases.

Heterogeneity leads to conformational glassy phases with spin-glass-like order.

Membranes exhibit universal anomalous elasticity influenced by fluctuations and disorder.

Abstract

In these lectures I discuss long-scale properties of fluctuating polymerized membranes in the presence of network anisotropy and random heterogeneities. Amazingly, even infinitesimal amount of these seemingly innocuous but physically important ingredients in the membrane's internal structure leads to a wealth of striking qualitatively new phenomena. Anisotropy leads to a ``tubule'' phase that is intermediate in its properties and location on the phase diagram between previously discussed ``crumpled'' and ``flat'' phases. At low temperature, network heterogeneity generates conformationally glassy phases, with membrane normals exhibiting glass order analogous to spin-glasses. The common thread to these distinct membrane phases is that they exhibit universal anomalous elasticity, (singularly length-scale dependent elastic moduli, universal Poisson ratio, etc.), driven by thermal fluctuations and/or disorder and controlled by a nontrivial low-temperature fixed point.