Dr. Luca Lussardi, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematical Sciences of Politecnico di Torino
Abstract:
The Canham-Helfrich energy is widely used to describe the elastic properties of biological membranes at the subcellular level. The membranes are modeled as surfaces in the three-dimensional space and their shape minimize an energy which penalizes the curvatures of the surface. A suitable multiphase energy permits to model also heterogeneous biological membranes. I will discuss existence of single and multiphase minimizers under area and enclosed volume constraints in the varifolds setting (joint work with K. Brazda and U. Stefanelli) and in the current setting (joint work with A. Kubin and M. Morandotti).