Apparent phase transitions and critical-like behavior in multi-component mixtures

Abstract

Liquid-liquid phase separation has recently emerged as an important topic in the context of cellular organization. Within this context, there are multiple poorly understood features; for instance hints of critical behavior in the plasma membrane, and how homeostasis maintains phase separation. In this paper, using statistical mechanics, we show that finite size effects in multicomponent mixtures can induce the system to behave as-if it were near a critical point, which we term apparent transitions. The apparent transition temperature is naturally driven towards the ambient temperature of the system.