Date of Thesis
Spring 2020
Description
Many biological structures can be modeled as a system of interacting particles moving on a two-dimensional elastic membrane, for instance, protein clusters on cell-membranes and capsids of immature enveloped viruses. In this work, we present a model for such systems. We adopt the combination of the Helfrich model and the Lennard-Jones model as our energy representation of the particle-membrane system. The nonlinearity of the model gives rise to a complex competition of equilibrium states of the energy with symmetric features. We implement group-theoretic techniques to examine symmetric states and develop an automated computer program that systematically catalogs the symmetric equilibrium configurations for varying numbers of particles and model parameters.
Keywords
Membrane Elasticity, Group Representation
Access Type
Honors Thesis (Bucknell Access Only)
Degree Type
Bachelor of Science
Major
Mathematics
First Advisor
Sanjay Dharmavaram
Second Advisor
Peter Brooksbank
Recommended Citation
Cheng, Clare, "Interacting Particles on a Spherical Fluid Shell: A Group Theoretic Study" (2020). Honors Theses. 544.
https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/honors_theses/544