CRITICAL-BEHAVIOR OF INTERACTING SURFACES WITH TENSION

Wetting phenomena, molecular protrusions of lipid bilayers and membran e stacks under lateral tension provide physical examples for interacti ng surfaces with tension. Such surfaces are studied theoretically usin g functional renormalization and Monte-Carlo simulations. The critical behavior arising from thermally-excited shape fluctuations is determi ned both for global quantities such as the mean separation of these su rfaces and for local quantities such as the probabilities for local co ntacts.