Numéro |
J. Phys. I France
Volume 6, Numéro 4, April 1996
|
|
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Page(s) | 493 - 502 | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/jp1:1996226 |
J. Phys. I France 6 (1996) 493-502
Disclination Asymmetry in Deformable Hexatic Membranes and the Kosterlitz-Thouless Transitions
Jeong-Man Park and T.C. LubenskyLaboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
(Received 6 November 1995, received in final form 14 December 1995, accepted 21 December 1995)
Abstract
A disclination in a hexatic membrane favors the development of Gaussian curvature localized near its core. The resulting global
structure of the membrane has mean curvature, which is disfavored by curvature energy. Thus a membrane with an isolated disclination
undergoes a bluckling transition from a flat to a buckled state as the ratio
of the bending rigidity
k to the hexatic rigidity
is decreased. In this paper we calculate the buckling transition and the energy of both a positive and a negative disclination.
A negative disclination has a larger energy and a smaller critical value of
at buckling than does a positive disclination. We use our results to obtain a crude estimate of the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition
temperature in a membrane. This estimate is higher than the transition temperature recently obtained by the authors in a renormalization
calculation.
© Les Editions de Physique 1996