SCALING OF CONFINED MEMBRANES AND INTERFACES

We have carried out Monte Carlo studies of the probability distributio n functions (PDFS) for models of two- and three-dimensional membranes and interfaces confined between two parallel repulsive walls separated by a distance D. For two-dimensional interfaces it is known that the position PDF p(z), for conformally mapped binding potentials, scales a nd is characterized by a universal scaling function p(z) approximately (sinpiz/D)theta-1 (where theta is the short distance expansion critic al exponent) for strong, weak and intermediate fluctation regimes. Our simulation studies show that for a variety of membrane models the PDF has the expected scaling p(z) = U(z/D)/D, and we find that the same p arametrization of the membrane PDFS gives an excellent fit to the nume rical data.