Liquid crystalline order and its impact on shape evolution of fluid lipid membranes

Abstract

Dynamic approaches to minimize the classical curvature-elasticity free energy for a fluid lipid membrane, are extended towards a Surface Beris--Edwards--Helfrich model. This extension explicitly treats the liquid crystal structure of the membrane, which results from the lipid molecules, that are, on average, oriented normal to the surface. Locally varying liquid crystal order leads to local variations in bending rigidities and surface viscosity and thus influences the shape evolution. This provides a multiscale coupling between the local membrane mechanics on the level of the lipids and the mesoscopic length and time scales of biological functions. The model is derived using the Lagrange--d'Alembert principle. We provide a numerical algorithm to solve the equations in the one-constant approximation and demonstrate the impact on the emerging equilibrium shapes, which not only depend on the specified conserved surface area and enclosed volume, as for the classical curvature-elasticity free energy, but also the elastic parameter. Exploring the dynamic evolution shows a tight coupling of tangential flow, shape evolution and liquid crystalline order. We further point to extensions towards lipid phase separation and asymmetric lipid bilayers.