Critical behavior of interacting surfaces with tension

TL;DR

This paper investigates the critical behavior of interacting surfaces under tension, focusing on thermal fluctuations and their effects on surface separation and contact probabilities, using theoretical and simulation methods.

Contribution

It introduces a combined theoretical and simulation approach to analyze the critical phenomena of tensioned interacting surfaces, highlighting fluctuation effects.

Findings

Critical behavior characterized for mean surface separation.

Probabilities of local contacts are quantitatively described.

Thermal fluctuations significantly influence surface interactions.

Abstract

Wetting phenomena, molecular protrusions of lipid bilayers and membrane stacks under lateral tension provide physical examples for interacting surfaces with tension. Such surfaces are studied theoretically using functional renormalization and Monte Carlo simulations. The critical behavior arising from thermally-excited shape fluctuations is determined both for global quantities such as the mean separation of these surfaces and for local quantities such as the probabilities for local contacts.