ABSENCE OF 1ST-ORDER UNBINDING TRANSITIONS OF FLUID AND POLYMERIZED MEMBRANES

Unbinding transition of fluid and polymerized membranes are studied by renormalization-group (RG) methods. Two different RG schemes are used and found to give rather consistent results. The fixed-point structure of both RGs exhibits a complex behavior as a function of the decay exponent for the fluctuation-induced interaction of the membranes. For >S2, interacting membranes can undergo first-order transitions even in the strong-fluctuation regime. Our estimates for S2 imply, however, that both fluid and polymerized membranes unbind in a continuous way in the absence of lateral tension. © 1990 The American Physical Society.