Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 108104 (2003) [4 pages]

Membranes with Rotating Motors

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Peter Lenz1, Jean-François Joanny1, Frank Jülicher1,2, and Jacques Prost1
1Institut Curie, UMR 168, 26 rue d’Ulm, F-75248 Paris Cédex 05, France
2Max-Planck-Institut für Physik komplexer Systeme, Nöthnitzer Straße 38, D-01187 Dresden, Germany

Received 15 October 2002; published 5 September 2003

We study collections of rotatory motors confined to two-dimensional manifolds. These systems show a nontrivial collective behavior since the rotational motion leads to a repulsive hydrodynamic interaction between motors. While for high rotation speed motors might exhibit crystalline order, they form at low speed a disordered phase where diffusion is enhanced by velocity fluctuations. These effects should be experimentally observable for motors driven by external fields and for dipolar biological motors embedded into lipid membranes in a viscoelastic solvent.


©2003 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.108104
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.108104
PACS: 87.16.–b, 05.40.–a, 87.15.Kg

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