A renormalization group study of the dynamics of active membranes: universality classes and scaling laws

Abstract

Motivated by experimental observations of patterning at the leading edge of motile eukaryotic cells, we introduce a general model for the dynamics of nearly-flat fluid membranes driven from within by an ensemble of activators. We include, in particular, a kinematic coupling between activator density and membrane slope which generically arises whenever the membrane has a non-vanishing normal speed. We unveil the phase diagram of the model by means of a perturbative field-theoretical renormalization group analysis. Due to the aforementioned kinematic coupling the natural dynamical scaling is acoustic, that is the dynamical critical exponent is 1. However, as soon as the the normal velocity of the membrane is tuned to zero, the system crosses over to diffusive dynamic scaling in mean field. Distinct critical points can be reached depending on how the limit of vanishing velocity is realised: in each of them corrections to scaling due to nonlinear coupling terms must be taken into accounts. The detailed analysis of these critical points reveals novel scaling regimes wich can be accessed with perturbative methods, together with signs of strong coupling behaviour, which establishes a promising ground for further non-perturbative calculations. Our results unify several previous studies on the dynamics of active membrane, while also identifying nontrivial scaling regimes which cannot be captured by passive theories of fluctuating interfaces and are relevant for the physics of living membranes.