Smoothening Transition of Rough Surfactant Surfaces

M. C. Diamantini; H. Kleinert; C. A. Trugenberger

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arXiv · cond-mat/9806077

Smoothening Transition of Rough Surfactant Surfaces

M. C. Diamantini·H. Kleinert·C. A. Trugenberger

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Abstract

We propose a model for surfaces in mixtures of oil, water and surfactants with strong electric dipoles. The dipole interactions give rise to a non-local interaction with negative stiffness between surface elements. We show that, for large space dimension D, this model has a phase transition from rough to smooth surfaces. Contrary to models with a simple quadratic curvature energy of positive sign, which always have a finite persistence length typical of rough surfaces, the smooth surfaces in our model exhibit long-range correlations of a generalized antiferromagnetic type. These correlations might be related to the recently observed "egg carton" superstructure of membranes.

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M. C. Diamantini, H. Kleinert, C. A. Trugenberger. 1998-07-06. Smoothening Transition of Rough Surfactant Surfaces. https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/9806077

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