Critical behavior of interacting surfaces with tension

Wetting phenomena, molecular protrusions of lipid bilayers and membrane stacks under lateral tension provide physical examples for interacting surfaces with tension. Such surfaces are studied theoretically using functional renormalization and Monte Carlo simulations. The critical behavior arising from thermally–excited shape fluctuations is determined both for global quantities such as the mean separation of these surfaces and for local quantities such as the probabilities for local contacts. PACS. 64.60.-i General studies of phase transitions – 68.35.Ct Interface structure and roughness