Phase transitions of lipid bilayers. I: Density of states calculation

We consider the problem of modeling the thermodynamic behavior of a lipid bilayer using statistical mechanics. In this paper, we present Monte Carlo calculations of the single chain density of states appropriate to the mean field model of Pink et al., under a variety of assumptions on the time scales of various lipid motions. We find that Pink et al.’s density of states agrees qualitatively with our calculation. Our results also provide justification for assumptions in the density of states calculation of Jacobs et al.