Thermodynamics of equilibrium interfaces on curved surfaces

Artificial lipid membranes are a valuable physical systems which might provide great insight in understanding the mechanisms which happen in living cells.
With the support of new experimental results on multicomponent lipid-coated freely suspended colloids, we will show how, for phase-separated equilibrium configurations, the interface location is influenced by surrounding curvature: just by looking at its position it is possible to estimate differences in mechanical parameters of the two phases.
Furthermore, curvature can source inhomogeneities in the free energy of the system, causing extremely stable lateral phase modulations which, for systems with non-smooth enough spatial variations, can lead to configurations indistinguishable from phase-separated membranes,
although the system is still in a mixed state.