title: Correlated lateral phase separations in stacks of lipid membranes.
abstract: Motivated by the experimental study of Tayebi et al. [Nat. Mater. 11, 1074 (2012)] on phase separation of stacked multi-component lipid bilayers, we propose a model composed of stacked two-dimensional Ising spins. We study both its static and dynamical features using Monte Carlo simulations with Kawasaki spin exchange dynamics that conserves the order parameter. We show that at thermodynamical equilibrium, due to strong inter-layer correlations, the system forms a continuous columnar structure for any finite interaction across adjacent layers. Furthermore, the phase separation shows a faster dynamics as the inter-layer interaction is increased. This temporal behavior is mainly due to an effective deeper temperature quench because of the larger value of the critical temperature, Tc, for larger inter-layer interaction. When the temperature ratio, T/Tc, is kept fixed, the temporal growth exponent does not increase and even slightly decreases as a function of the increased inter-layer interaction.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Tokyo 192-0397, Japan.
authors.forename: Takuma
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hoshino
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Tokyo 192-0397, Japan.
authors.forename: Shigeyuki
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Komura
authors.affiliation: Raymond and Beverly Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Andelman
mesh_terms: D008051:Lipid Bilayers / Q000737:chemistry*; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D013816:Thermodynamics
chemical_list: D008051:Lipid Bilayers