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Thermal Casimir effect in lipid bilayer tubules

D. S. Dean1,2 and R. R. Horgan1

  • 1DAMTP, CMS, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB3 0WA, United Kingdom
  • 2Laboratoire de Physique Théorique, UMR CNRS 5152, IRSAMC, Université Paul Sabatier, 118 route de Narbonne, 31062 Toulouse Cedex 04, France

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Phys. Rev. E 71, 041907 – Published 15 April, 2005

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.71.041907

Abstract

We calculate the thermal Casimir effect for a dielectric tube of radius R and thickness δ formed from a membrane in water. The method uses a field-theoretic approach in the grand canonical ensemble. The leading contribution to the Casimir free energy behaves as −kBTLκc∕R giving rise to an attractive force which tends to contract the tube. We find that κc∼0.3 for the case of typical lipid membrane t tubules. We conclude that except in the case of a very soft membrane this force is insufficient to stabilize such tubes against the bending stress which tends to increase the radius.

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Phys. Rev. E 71, 041907– Published 15 April, 2005
  • Received 25 October 2004

© 2005 American Physical Society

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