Periodic lipidic membrane tubes

We investigate the formation of two-phase lipidic tubes of membrane in the framework of the Canham-Helfrich model. The two phases have different elastic moduli (bending and Gaussian rigidity), different tensions and a line tension prevents the mixing. For a set of parameters close to experimental values, periodic patterns with arbitrary wavelength can be found numerically. A wavelength selection is detected via the existence of an energy minimum. When the chemical composition induces an important enough size disequilibrium between both phases, a segregation into two half infinite tubes is preferred to a periodic structure.