Numerical Observation of a Tubular Phase in Anisotropic Membranes

We provide the first numerical evidence for the existence of a tubular phase, predicted by Radzihovsky and Toner (RT), for anisotropic tethered membranes without self-avoidance. Incorporating anisotropy into the bending rigidity of a simple model of a tethered membrane with free boundary conditions, we show that the model indeed has two phase transitions corresponding to the flat-to-tubular and tubular-to-crumpled transitions. For the tubular phase we measure the Flory exponent {nu}{sub F} and the roughness exponent {zeta} . We find {nu}{sub F}=0.305(14) and {zeta}=0.895(60) , which are in reasonable agreement with the theoretical predictions of RT; {nu}{sub F}=1/4 and {zeta}=1 . {copyright} {ital 1997} {ital The American Physical Society}