Surface tension of membranes depending on the boundary shape

Abstract

In this paper, we study the boundary effect on the surface (or frame) tension of elastic membrane surface models. The frame tension generally depends only on the projected area of the boundary over which the surface spans. However, from a spin model analogy, the frame tension is expected to be dependent also on the boundary shape at the continuous transition point. We confirm this expectation using the following fixed-connectivity and tethered surface models: the surface model of Helfrich and Polyakov and a surface model with deficit angle term. We also discuss the reason why this expectation is worthwhile to study.